A sample of dust attenuation laws for Dark Energy Survey supernova host galaxies^⋆,⋆⋆

¹ CENTRA, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
e-mail: joao.r.d.duarte@tecnico.ulisboa.pt
² CENTRA, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Ed. C8, Campo Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
³ Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC), 08034 Barcelona, Spain
⁴ Institute of Space Sciences (ICE, CSIC), Campus UAB, Carrer de Can Magrans, s/n, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
⁵ Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 3FX, UK
⁶ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
⁷ Department of Physics, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
⁸ Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
⁹ Department of Astronomy, University of California Berkeley, 501 Campbell Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
¹⁰ Laboratório Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia – LIneA, Rua Gal. José Cristino 77, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 20921-400, Brazil
¹¹ Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
¹² CNRS, UMR 7095, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, 75014 Paris, France
¹³ Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR 7095, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, 75014 Paris, France
¹⁴ University Observatory, Faculty of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Scheinerstr. 1, 81679 Munich, Germany
¹⁵ Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
¹⁶ Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics & Cosmology, PO Box 2450, Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305, USA
¹⁷ SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA
¹⁸ Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
¹⁹ Universidad de La Laguna, Dpto. Astrofísica, 38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
²⁰ Center for Astrophysical Surveys, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, 1205 West Clark St., Urbana, IL 61801, USA
²¹ Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1002 W. Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
²² Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
²³ Astronomy Unit, Department of Physics, University of Trieste, Via Tiepolo 11, 34131 Trieste, Italy
²⁴ INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Via G. B. Tiepolo 11, 34143 Trieste, Italy
²⁵ Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe, Via Beirut 2, 34014 Trieste, Italy
²⁶ Hamburger Sternwarte, Universität Hamburg, Gojenbergsweg 112, 21029 Hamburg, Germany
²⁷ School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
²⁸ Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT), Madrid, Spain
²⁹ Department of Physics, IIT Hyderabad, Kandi, Telangana 502285, India
³⁰ Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, PO Box 500 Batavia, IL 60510, USA
³¹ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
³² Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, PO Box 1029 Blindern 0315 Oslo, Norway
³³ Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
³⁴ Instituto de Fisica Teorica UAM/CSIC, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain
³⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
³⁶ Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
³⁷ Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
³⁸ Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
³⁹ Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
⁴⁰ Australian Astronomical Optics, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2113, Australia
⁴¹ Lowell Observatory, 1400 Mars Hill Rd, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA
⁴² Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Peyton Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
⁴³ Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, 08010 Barcelona, Spain
⁴⁴ Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
⁴⁵ Observatório Nacional, Rua Gal. José Cristino 77, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 20921-400, Brazil
⁴⁶ Computer Science and Mathematics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA
⁴⁷ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

Received: 29 March 2023
Accepted: 5 October 2023

Abstract

Context. Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are useful distance indicators in cosmology, provided their luminosity is standardized by applying empirical corrections based on light-curve properties. One factor behind these corrections is dust extinction, which is accounted for in the color–luminosity relation of the standardization. This relation is usually assumed to be universal, which can potentially introduce systematics into the standardization. The “mass step” observed for SN Ia Hubble residuals has been suggested as one such systematic.

Aims. We seek to obtain a more complete view of dust attenuation properties for a sample of 162 SN Ia host galaxies and to probe their link to the mass step.

Methods. We inferred attenuation laws toward hosts from both global and local (4 kpc) Dark Energy Survey photometry and composite stellar population model fits.

Results. We recovered a relation between the optical depth and the attenuation slope, best explained by differing star-to-dust geometry for different galaxy orientations, which is significantly different from the optical depth and extinction slope relation observed directly for SNe. We obtain a large variation of attenuation slopes and confirm these change with host properties, such as the stellar mass and age, meaning a universal SN Ia correction should ideally not be assumed. Analyzing the cosmological standardization, we find evidence for a mass step and a two-dimensional “dust step”, both more pronounced for red SNe. Although comparable, the two steps are not found to be completely analogous.

Conclusions. We conclude that host galaxy dust data cannot fully account for the mass step, using either an alternative SN standardization with extinction proxied by host attenuation or a dust-step approach.