A Spectroscopic Model of the Type Ia Supernova--Host Galaxy Mass Correlation from SALT3

TL;DR

This paper develops a SALT3 spectral model linking Type Ia supernovae to host galaxy mass, revealing intrinsic spectral differences and reducing the mass step, aiding cosmological measurements.

Contribution

The study introduces a SALT3 model that incorporates host-galaxy mass effects, improving understanding of spectral variations and the mass step in SN Ia cosmology.

Findings

Spectral differences correlate with host galaxy mass at 2.2-2.7σ significance.

Applying the model reduces the mass step by 0.021 mag, explaining ~35% of it.

The model captures intrinsic spectral variations not modeled by previous SALT models.

Abstract

The unknown cause of the correlation between Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) Hubble residuals and their host-galaxy masses (the "mass step") may bias cosmological parameter measurements. To better understand the mass step, we develop a SALT3 light-curve model for SN cosmology that uses the host-galaxy masses of 296 low-redshift SNe Ia to derive a spectral-energy distribution--host-galaxy mass relationship. The resulting model has larger Ca II H&K, Ca II near-infrared triplet, and Si II equivalent widths for SNe in low-mass host galaxies at 2.2-2.7$\sigma$ significance; this indicates higher explosion energies per unit mass in low-mass-hosted SNe. The model has phase-dependent changes in SN Ia colors as a function of host mass, indicating intrinsic differences in mean broadband light curves. Although the model provides a better fit to the SN data overall, it does not substantially reduce data--model residuals for a typical light curve in our sample nor does it significantly reduce Hubble residual dispersion. This is because we find that previous SALT models parameterized most host-galaxy dependencies with their first principal component, although they failed to model some significant spectral variations. Our new model is luminosity and cosmology independent, and applying it to data reduces the mass step by $0.021\pm0.002$ mag (uncertainty accounts for correlated data sets); these results indicate that $\sim$35% of the mass step can be attributed to luminosity-independent effects. This SALT model version could be trained using alternative host-galaxy properties and at different redshifts, and therefore will be a tool for understanding redshift-dependent correlations between SNe Ia and their host properties as well as their impact on cosmological parameter measurements.