Using 1533 type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) from the five-year sample of the Dark Energy Survey (DES), we investigate the relationship between the projected galactocentric separation of the SNe and their host galaxies and their light curves and standardization. We show, for the first time, that the difference in SN Ia post-standardization brightnesses between high and low-mass hosts reduces from 0.078±0.011 mag in the full sample to 0.036 ± 0.018 mag for SNe Ia located in the outer regions of their host galaxies, while increasing to 0.100 ± 0.014 mag for SNe in the inner regions. The difference in the size of the mass step between inner and outer regions is 0.064±0.023 mag. In these inner regions, the step can be reduced (but not removed) using a model where the R_V of dust along the line-of-sight to the SN changes as a function of galaxy properties. We investigate the remaining difference using the distributions of the SN Ia stretch parameter to test the inferred age of SN progenitors. Comparing red (older) environments only, outer regions have a higher proportion of high-stretch SNe and a more homogeneous stretch distribution. However, this effect cannot explain the reduction in significance of any Hubble residual step in outer regions. We conclude that the standardized distances of SNe Ia located in the outer regions of galaxies are less affected by their global host galaxy properties than those in the inner regions.
Understanding the impact of the astrophysical environment on Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) properties is crucial to minimize systematic uncertainties in cosmological analyses based on this probe. We investigate the dependence of the SN Ia SALT2.4 light-curve stretch on the distance from their nearest galaxy cluster to study a potential effect of the intracluster medium (ICM) environment on SN Ia intrinsic properties. We use the largest SN Ia sample to date and cross-match it with existing X-ray, Sunyaev-Zel'dovich, and optical cluster catalogs in order to study the dependence between stretch and distance to the nearest detected cluster from each SN Ia. We model the underlying stretch distribution with a Gaussian mixture with relative amplitudes that depend on redshift and cluster-centric distance. We find a significant improvement of the fit quality of the stretch distribution if we include the distance-dependant term in the model with a variation of the Akaike information criterion $\rm{\Delta AIC} = -10.2$. Because of the known correlation between galaxy age and distance from cluster center, this supports previous evidence that the age of the stellar population is the underlying driver of the bimodial shape of the SN Ia stretch distribution. We further compute the evolution of the fraction of quenched galaxies as a function of distance with respect to cluster center from our best-fit model of the SNe Ia stretch distribution and compare it to previous results obtained from $H\alpha$ line measurements, optical broadband photometry, and simulations. We find our estimate to be compatible with these results. The results of this work indicate that SNe Ia searches at high redshift targeted towards clusters to maximize detection probability should be considered with caution as the stretch distribution of the detected sample would be strongly biased towards the old sub-population of SNe Ia.
The Zwicky Transient Facility SN Ia Data Release 2 (ZTF SN Ia DR2) contains more than 3000 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), providing the largest homogeneous low-redshift sample of SNe Ia. Having at least one spectrum per event, this data collection is ideal for large-scale statistical studies of the photometric, spectroscopic and host-galaxy properties of SNe Ia, particularly of the rarer ‘peculiar’ sub-classes. In this paper we first present the method we developed to spectroscopically classify the SNe in the sample, and the techniques we used to model their multi-band light curves and explore their photometric properties. We then show a method to distinguish between the peculiar sub-types and the normal SNe Ia. We also explore the properties of their host galaxies and estimate their relative rates, focusing on the peculiar sub-types and their connection to the cosmologically useful SNe Ia. Finally, we discuss the implications of our study with respect to the progenitor systems of the peculiar SN Ia events.
SNe Ia are used to determine the distance-redshift relation and build the Hubble diagram. Neglecting their host-galaxy peculiar velocities (PVs) may bias the measurement of cosmological parameters. The smaller the redshift, the larger the effect is. We use realistic simulations of SNe Ia observed by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) to investigate the effect of different methods to take into account PVs. We study the impact of neglecting galaxy PVs and their correlations in an analysis of the SNe Ia Hubble diagram. We find that it is necessary to use the PV full covariance matrix computed from the velocity power spectrum to take into account the sample variance. Considering the results we have obtained using simulations, we determine the PV systematic effects in the context of the ZTF DR2 SNe Ia sample. We determine the PV impact on the intercept of the Hubble diagram, a_B, which is directly linked to the measurement of H_0. We show that not taking into account PVs and their correlations results in a shift of the H_0 value of about 1.0km.s^-1.Mpc^-1 and a slight underestimation of the H_0 error bar.
As Type Ia supernova cosmology transitions from a statistics dominated to a systematics dominated era, it is crucial to understand leftover unexplained uncertainties affecting their luminosity, such as the ones stemming from astrophysical biases. Indeed, SNe Ia are standardisable candles, whose absolute magnitude reach a 0.15~mag scatter once empirical correlations with their lightcurve stretch and colour and with their environment are accounted for. In this paper, we investigate how the standardisation process of SNe Ia depends on environment, to ultimately reduce their scatter in magnitude, focusing on colour standardisation. We use the volume-limited ZTF SN Ia DR2 sample, which offers unprecedented statistics for the low redshift ($z<0.06$) range. We first study the colour distribution, focusing on the effects of dust, to then select a dustless subsample of objects from low stellar mass environments and from the outskirts of their host galaxies. We then look at the colour-residuals relation and its associated parameter $\beta$. Finally, we investigate the colour dependency of the environment-dependent magnitude offsets (steps), to try to disentangle intrinsic and extrinsic colour origin. Our sample probes well the red tail of the colour distribution, up to $c=0.8$. The dustless sample exhibits a significantly lower red tail ($4.6\sigma$) in comparison to the whole sample. This suggests that reddening above $c\geq0.2$ is dominated by host interstellar dust absorption. Looking at the colour-residuals relation, we find it to be linear with lightcurve colour. We show hints of a potential evolution of $\beta$ with host stellar mass at a $2.5\sigma$ level. Finally, unlike recent claims from the literature, we see no evolution of steps as a function of lightcurve colour, suggesting that dust may not be the dominating mechanism responsible for the environmental dependency of SNe Ia magnitude.
The unprecedented statistics of detected Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) brought by the Zwicky Transient Facility enables us to probe the impact of the Large-Scale Structure on the properties of these objects. The goal of this paper is to explore the possible impact of the under-dense part of the large-scale structure on the intrinsic SALT2 light curve properties of SNe Ia and uncover possible biases in SN Ia analyses. With a volume-limited selection of ZTF-Cosmo-DR2 Type Ia supernovae overlapping with the SDSS-DR7 survey footprint, we investigate the distribution of their properties with regard to voids detected in the SDSS-DR7 galaxy sample. We further use Voronoi volumes as proxy for local density environments within the large-scale structure. We find a moderate dependency of the stretch toward the localisation around the void centre and none when considering colour. The local Voronoi volumes mostly affect the fraction of low/high stretch supernovae. With the current statistics available, we consider that the impact of high or low local density environment can be considered as a proxy for the colour of the host galaxy. Under-dense environments should not cause any biases in supernova analyses.
Type Ia supernova (SNIa) are excellent probes of local distance, and the increasing sample sizes of SNIa have driven an increased need to study the associated systematic uncertainties and improve the standardisation methods in preparation for the next generation of cosmological surveys into the dark energy equation-of-state $w$. We aim to probe the potential change in the SNIa standardisation parameter $c$ with redshift and the host-galaxy of the supernova. Improving the standardisation of SNIa brightnesses will require accounting for the relationship between the host and the SNIa, and potential shifts in the SNIa standardisation parameters with redshift will cause biases in the recovered cosmology. Here, we assemble a volume-limited sample of ~3000 likely SNIa across a redshift range of $z = 0.015$ to $z = 0.36$. This sample is fitted with changing mass and redshift bins to determine the relationship between intrinsic properties of SNe Ia and their redshift and host galaxy parameters. We then investigate the colour-luminosity parameter $\beta$ as a further test of the SNIa standardisation process. We find that the changing colour distribution of SNe Ia with redshift is driven by dust at a confidence of $>4\sigma$. Additionally, we show a strong correlation between the host galaxy mass and the colour-luminosity coefficient $\beta$ ($> 4\sigma$), even when accounting for the quantity of dust in a host galaxy.
Measurements of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) in the near-infrared (NIR) have been used both as an alternate path to cosmology compared to optical measurements and as a method of constraining key systematics for the larger optical studies. With the DEHVILS sample, the largest published NIR sample with consistent NIR coverage of maximum light across three NIR bands ($Y$, $J$, and $H$), we check three key systematics: (i) the reduction in Hubble residual scatter as compared to the optical, (ii) the measurement of a ``mass step'' or lack thereof and its implications, and (iii) the ability to distinguish between various dust models by analyzing slopes and correlations between Hubble residuals in the NIR and optical. We produce SN Ia simulations of the DEHVILS sample and find that it is harder to differentiate between various dust models than previously understood. Additionally, we find that fitting with the current SALT3-NIR model does not yield accurate wavelength-dependent stretch-luminosity correlations, and we propose a limited solution for this problem. From the data, we see that (i) the standard deviation of Hubble residual values from NIR bands treated as standard candles are 0.007--0.042 mag smaller than those in the optical, (ii) the NIR mass step is not constrainable with the current sample size of 47 SNe Ia from DEHVILS, and (iii) Hubble residuals in the NIR and optical are correlated in the data. We test a few variations on the number and combinations of filters and data samples, and we observe that none of our findings or conclusions are significantly impacted by these modifications.
We report constraints on a variety of non-standard cosmological models using the full 5-year photometrically-classified type Ia supernova sample from the Dark Energy Survey (DES-SN5YR). Both Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Suspiciousness calculations find no strong evidence for or against any of the non-standard models we explore. When combined with external probes, the AIC and Suspiciousness agree that 11 of the 15 models are moderately preferred over Flat-$\Lambda$CDM suggesting additional flexibility in our cosmological models may be required beyond the cosmological constant. We also provide a detailed discussion of all cosmological assumptions that appear in the DES supernova cosmology analyses, evaluate their impact, and provide guidance on using the DES Hubble diagram to test non-standard models. An approximate cosmological model, used to perform bias corrections to the data holds the biggest potential for harbouring cosmological assumptions. We show that even if the approximate cosmological model is constructed with a matter density shifted by $\Delta\Omega_m\sim0.2$ from the true matter density of a simulated data set the bias that arises is sub-dominant to statistical uncertainties. Nevertheless, we present and validate a methodology to reduce this bias.
Cosmological analyses with Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) have traditionally been reliant on spectroscopy for both classifying the type of supernova and obtaining reliable redshifts to measure the distance-redshift relation. While obtaining a host-galaxy spectroscopic redshift for most SNe is feasible for small-area transient surveys, it will be too resource intensive for upcoming large-area surveys such as the Vera Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which will observe on the order of millions of SNe. Here, we use data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) to address this problem with photometric redshifts (photo-z) inferred directly from the SN light curve in combination with Gaussian and full p(z) priors from host-galaxy photo-z estimates. Using the DES 5-yr photometrically classified SN sample, we consider several photo-z algorithms as host-galaxy photo-z priors, including the Self-Organizing Map redshifts (SOMPZ), Bayesian Photometric Redshifts (BPZ), and Directional-Neighbourhood Fitting (DNF) redshift estimates employed in the DES 3 x 2 point analyses. With detailed catalogue-level simulations of the DES 5-yr sample, we find that the simulated w can be recovered within +/- 0.02 when using SN+SOMPZ or DNF prior photo-z, smaller than the average statistical uncertainty for these samples of 0.03. With data, we obtain biases in w consistent with simulations within similar to 1 sigma for three of the five photo-z variants. We further evaluate how photo-z systematics interplay with photometric classification and find classification introduces a subdominant systematic component. This work lays the foundation for next-generation fully photometric SNe Ia cosmological analyses.
We present cosmological constraints from the sample of Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) discovered during the full five years of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Supernova Program. In contrast to most previous cosmological samples, in which SN are classified based on their spectra, we classify the DES SNe using a machine learning algorithm applied to their light curves in four photometric bands. Spectroscopic redshifts are acquired from a dedicated follow-up survey of the host galaxies. After accounting for the likelihood of each SN being a SN Ia, we find 1635 DES SNe in the redshift range $0.100.5$ SNe compared to the previous leading compilation of Pantheon+, and results in the tightest cosmological constraints achieved by any SN data set to date. To derive cosmological constraints we combine the DES supernova data with a high-quality external low-redshift sample consisting of 194 SNe Ia spanning $0.025
To get distances, Type Ia Supernovae magnitudes are corrected for their correlation with lightcurve width and colour. Here we investigate how this standardisation is affected by the SN environment, with the aim to reduce scatter and improve standardisation. We first study the SN Ia stretch distribution, as well as its dependence on environment, as characterised by local and global (g-z) colour and stellar mass. We then look at the standardisation parameter $\alpha$, which accounts for the correlation between residuals and stretch, along with its environment dependence and linearity. We finally compute magnitude offsets between SNe in different astrophysical environments after colour and stretch standardisation, aka steps. This analysis is made possible due to the unprecedented statistics of the ZTF SN Ia DR2 volume-limited sample. The stretch distribution exhibits a bimodal behaviour, as previously found in literature. However, we find the distribution means to decrease with host stellar mass at a 9.0$\sigma$ significance. We demonstrate, at the 14.3$\sigma$ level, that the stretch-magnitude relation is non-linear, challenging the usual linear stretch-residuals relation. Fitting for a broken-$\alpha$ model, we indeed find two different slopes between stretch regimes ($x_1<-0.49\pm0.06$): $\alpha_{low}=0.28\pm0.01$ and $\alpha_{high}=0.09\pm0.01$, a $\Delta_{\alpha}=-0.19\pm0.01$ difference. As the relative proportion of SNe Ia in the high-/low-stretch modes evolves with redshift and environment, this implies that a linear $\alpha$ also evolves with redshift and environment. Concerning the environmental magnitude offset $\gamma$, we find it to be greater than 0.14 mag regardless of the considered environmental tracer used (local or global colour and stellar mass), all measured at the $\geq 6\sigma$ level, increased to $\sim0.18\pm0.01$ mag when accounting for the stretch-non linearity.
Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) are a critical tool in measuring the accelerating expansion of the universe. Recent efforts to improve these standard candles have focused on incorporating the effects of dust on distance measurements with SNe Ia. In this paper, we use the state-of-the-art Dark Energy Survey 5 year sample to evaluate two different families of dust models: empirical extinction models derived from SNe Ia data, and physical attenuation models from the spectra of galaxies. Among the SNe Ia-derived models, we find that a logistic function of the total-to-selective extinction RV best recreates the correlations between supernova distance measurements and host galaxy properties, though an additional 0.02 magnitudes of grey scatter are needed to fully explain the scatter in SNIa brightness in all cases. These empirically-derived extinction distributions are highly incompatible with the physical attenuation models from galactic spectral measurements. From these results, we conclude that SNe Ia must either preferentially select extreme ends of galactic dust distributions, or that the characterisation of dust along the SNe Ia line-of-sight is incompatible with that of galactic dust distributions.
Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) cosmology analyses include a luminosity step function in their distance standardization process to account for an observed yet unexplained difference in the post-standardization luminosities of SNe Ia originating from different host galaxy populations (e.g., high-mass ($M \gtrsim 10^{10} M_{\odot}$) versus low-mass galaxies). We present a novel method for including host-mass correlations in the SALT3 light curve model used for standardising SN Ia distances. We split the SALT3 training sample according to host-mass, training independent models for the low- and high-host-mass samples. Our models indicate that there are different average Si II spectral feature strengths between the two populations, and that the average SED of SNe from low-mass galaxies is bluer than the high-mass counterpart. We then use our trained models to perform a SN cosmology analysis on the 3-year spectroscopically confirmed Dark Energy Survey SN sample, treating SNe from low- and high-mass host galaxies as separate populations throughout. We find that our mass-split models reduce the Hubble residual scatter in the sample, albeit at a low statistical significance. We do find a reduction in the mass-correlated luminosity step but conclude that this arises from the model-dependent re-definition of the fiducial SN absolute magnitude rather than the models themselves. Our results stress the importance of adopting a standard definition of the SN parameters ($x_0, x_1, c$) in order to extract the most value out of the light curve modelling tools that are currently available and to correctly interpret results that are fit with different models.
We present griz photometric light curves for the full 5 yr of the Dark Energy Survey Supernova (DES-SN) program, obtained with both forced point-spread function photometry on difference images (DiffImg) performed during survey operations, and scene modelling photometry (SMP) on search images processed after the survey. This release contains 31,636 DiffImg and 19,706 high-quality SMP light curves, the latter of which contain 1635 photometrically classified SNe that pass cosmology quality cuts. This sample spans the largest redshift (z) range ever covered by a single SN survey (0.1 < z < 1.13) and is the largest single sample from a single instrument of SNe ever used for cosmological constraints. We describe in detail the improvements made to obtain the final DES-SN photometry and provide a comparison to what was used in the 3 yr DES-SN spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia SN sample. We also include a comparative analysis of the performance of the SMP photometry with respect to the real-time DiffImg forced photometry and find that SMP photometry is more precise, more accurate, and less sensitive to the host-galaxy surface brightness anomaly. The public release of the light curves and ancillary data can be found at github.com/des-science/DES-SN5YR and doi:10.5281/zenodo.12720777.
We present the luminosity functions and host galaxy properties of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) core-collapse supernova (CCSN) sample, consisting of 69 Type II and 50 Type Ibc spectroscopically and photometrically-confirmed supernovae over a redshift range 0.045<z<0.25. We fit the observed DES griz CCSN light-curves and K-correct to produce rest-frame R-band light curves. We compare the sample with lower-redshift CCSN samples from Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and Lick Observatory Supernova Search (LOSS). Comparing luminosity functions, the DES and ZTF samples of SNe II are brighter than that of LOSS with significances of 3.0σ and 2.5σ respectively. While this difference could be caused by redshift evolution in the luminosity function, simpler explanations such as differing levels of host extinction remain a possibility. We find that the host galaxies of SNe II in DES are on average bluer than in ZTF, despite having consistent stellar mass distributions. We consider a number of possibilities to explain this – including galaxy evolution with redshift, selection biases in either the DES or ZTF samples, and systematic differences due to the different photometric bands available – but find that none can easily reconcile the differences in host colour between the two samples and thus its cause remains uncertain.
ABSTRACT For the past decade, SALT2 has been the most common model used to fit Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) light curves for dark energy analyses. Recently, the SALT3 model was released, which upgraded a number of model features but has not yet been used for measurements of dark energy. Here, we evaluate the impact of switching from SALT2 to SALT3 for a SN cosmology analysis. We train SALT2 and SALT3 on an identical training sample of 1083 well-calibrated Type Ia supernovae, ensuring that any differences found come from the underlying model framework. We publicly release the results of this training (the SALT ‘surfaces’). We then run a cosmology analysis on the public Dark Energy Survey 3-Yr Supernova data sample (DES-SN3YR), and on realistic simulations of those data. We provide the first estimate of the SN + CMB systematic uncertainty arising from the choice of SALT model framework (i.e. SALT2 versus SALT3), Δw = + 0.001 ± 0.005 – a negligible effect at the current level of dark energy analyses. We also find that the updated surfaces are less sensitive to photometric calibration uncertainties than previous SALT2 surfaces, with the average spectral energy density dispersion reduced by a factor of two over optical wavelengths. This offers an opportunity to reduce the contribution of calibration errors to SN cosmology uncertainty budgets.
Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are explosions of white dwarf stars that facilitate exquisite measurements of cosmological expansion history, but improvements in accuracy and precision are hindered by observational biases. Of particular concern is the apparent difference in the corrected brightnesses of SNe Ia in different host galaxy environments. SNe Ia in more massive, passive, older environments appear brighter after having been standardized by their light-curve properties. The luminosity difference commonly takes the form of a step function. Recent works imply that environmental characteristics that trace the age of the stellar population in the vicinity of SNe show the largest steps. Here we use simulations of SN Ia populations to test the impact of using different tracers and investigate promising new models of the step. We test models with a total-to-selective dust extinction ratio RV that changes between young and old SN Ia host galaxies, as well as an intrinsic luminosity difference between SNe from young and old progenitors. The data are well replicated by a model driven by a galaxy-age varying RV and no intrinsic SN luminosity difference, and we find that specific star-formation rate measured locally to the SN is a relatively pure tracer of this galaxy age difference. We cannot rule out an intrinsic difference causing part of the observed step and show that if luminosity differences are caused by multiple drivers then no single environmental measurement is able to accurately trace them. We encourage the use of multiple tracers in luminosity corrections to negate this issue.
Cosmological analyses of samples of photometrically identified type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) depend on understanding the effects of 'contamination' from core-collapse and peculiar SN Ia events. We employ a rigorous analysis using the photometric classifier SuperNNova on state-of-the-art simulations of SN samples to determine cosmological biases due to such 'non-Ia' contamination in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) 5-yr SN sample. Depending on the non-Ia SN models used in the SuperNNova training and testing samples, contamination ranges from 0.8 to 3.5 per cent, with a classification efficiency of 97.7-99.5 percent. Using the Bayesian Estimation Applied to Multiple Species (BEAMS) framework and its extension BBC ('BEAMS with Bias Correction'), we produce a redshift-binned Hubble diagram marginalized over contamination and corrected for selection effects, and use it to constrain the dark energy equation-of-state, w. Assuming a flat universe with Gaussian Omega(M) prior of 0.311 +/- 0.010, we show that biases on w are <0.008 when using SuperNNova, with systematic uncertainties associated with contamination around 10 percent of the statistical uncertainty on w for the DES-SN sample. An alternative approach of discarding contaminants using outlier rejection techniques (e.g. Chauvenet's criterion) in place of SuperNNova leads to biases on w that are larger but still modest (0.015-0.03). Finally, we measure biases due to contamination on w(0) and w(a) (assuming a flat universe), and find these to be <0.009 in w(0) and <0.108 in w(a), 5 to 10 times smaller than the statistical uncertainties for the DES-SN sample.
The $Euclid$ mission will provide first-of-its-kind coverage in the near-infrared over deep (three fields, $\sim$10-20 square degrees each) and wide ($\sim$10000 square degrees) fields. While the survey is not designed to discover transients, the deep fields will have repeated observations over a two-week span, followed by a gap of roughly six months. In this analysis, we explore how useful the deep field observations will be for measuring properties of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). Using simulations that include $Euclid$'s planned depth, area and cadence in the deep fields, we calculate that more than 3700 SNe between $0.00.8$. Furthermore, we predict how well additional $Euclid$ mock data can be used to constrain a key systematic in SN Ia studies - the size of the luminosity 'step' found between SNe hosted in high mass ($>10^{10} M_{\odot}$) and low mass ($>10^{10} M_{\odot}$) galaxies. This measurement has unique information in the rest-frame NIR. We predict that if the step is caused by dust, we will be able to measure its reduction in the NIR compared to optical at the 4$\sigma$ level. We highlight that the LSST and $Euclid$ observing strategies used in this work are still provisional and some level of joint processing is required. Still, these first results are promising, and assuming $Euclid$ begins observations well before the Nancy Roman Space Telescope (Roman), we expect this dataset to be extremely helpful for preparation for Roman itself.