Testing the homogeneity of type Ia Supernovae in near-infrared for accurate distance estimations^⋆

¹ Institute of Space Sciences (ICE, CSIC), Campus UAB, Carrer de Can Magrans, s/n, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: t.e.muller-bravo@ice.csic.es
² Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC), 08034 Barcelona, Spain
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
⁴ Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, 813 Santa Barbara St., Pasadena, CA 91101, USA
⁵ European Southern Observatory, Alonso de Córdova 3107, Casilla 19, Santiago, Chile
⁶ Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai’i, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
⁷ Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA
⁸ Department of Physics & Astronomy, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
⁹ Hamburger Sternwarte, Hamburg, Germany
¹⁰ Department of Physics, Florida State University, 77 Chieftan Way, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA
¹¹ Carnegie Observatories, Las Campanas Observatory, Casilla 601, La Serena, Chile
¹² George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, College Station, TX 77843, USA
¹³ Centre for Space Studies, American Public University System, 111 W. Congress Street, Charles Town, WV 25414, USA

Received: 22 April 2022
Accepted: 9 July 2022

Abstract

Since the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe more than two decades ago, Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) have been extensively used as standardisable candles in the optical. However, SNe Ia have shown to be more homogeneous in the near-infrared (NIR), where the effect of dust extinction is also attenuated. In this work, we explore the possibility of using a low number of NIR observations for accurate distance estimations, given the homogeneity at these wavelengths. We found that one epoch in J and/or H band, plus good gr-band coverage, gives an accurate estimation of peak magnitudes in the J (J_max) and H (H_max) bands. The use of a single NIR epoch only introduces an additional scatter of ∼0.05 mag for epochs around the time of B-band peak magnitude (T_max). We also tested the effect of optical cadence and signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) in the estimation of T_max and its uncertainty propagation to the NIR peak magnitudes. Both cadence and S/N have a similar contribution, where we constrained the introduced scatter of each to < 0.02 mag in J_max and < 0.01 in H_max. However, these effects are expected to be negligible, provided the data quality is comparable to that obtained for observations of nearby SNe (z ≲ 0.1). The effect of S/N in the NIR was tested as well. For SNe Ia at 0.08 < z ≲ 0.1, NIR observations with better S/N than that found in the CSP sample is necessary to constrain the introduced scatter to a minimum (≲0.05 mag). These results provide confidence for our FLOWS project that is aimed at using SNe Ia with public ZTF optical light curves and few NIR epochs to map out the peculiar velocity field of the local Universe. This will allow us to determine the distribution of dark matter in our own supercluster, Laniakea, and to test the standard cosmological model by measuring the growth rate of structures, parameterised by fD, and the Hubble-Lemaître constant, H₀.