On the use of the local prior on the absolute magnitude of Type Ia supernovae in cosmological inference

By D. Camarena, Valerio Marra. 2021

177 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A dark-energy which behaves as the cosmological constant until a sudden phantom transition at very-low redshift ($z 4$\sigma$ disagreement between the local and high-redshift determinations of the Hubble constant, while maintaining the phenomenological success of the $\Lambda$CDM model with respect to the other observables. Here, we show that such a hockey-stick dark energy cannot solve the $H_0$ crisis. The basic reason is that the supernova absolute magnitude $M_B$ that is used to derive the local $H_0$ constraint is not compatible with the $M_B$ that is necessary to fit supernova, BAO and CMB data, and this disagreement is not solved by a sudden phantom transition at very-low redshift. We make use of this example to show why it is preferable to adopt in the statistical analyses the prior on $M_B$ as an alternative to the prior on $H_0$. The three reasons are: i) one avoids potential double counting of low-redshift supernovae, ii) one avoids assuming the validity of cosmography, in particular fixing the deceleration parameter to the standard model value $q_0=-0.55$, iii) one includes in the analysis the fact that $M_B$ is constrained by local calibration, an information which would otherwise be neglected in the analysis, biasing both model selection and parameter constraints. We provide the priors on $M_B$ relative to the recent Pantheon and DES-SN3YR supernova catalogs. We also provide a Gaussian joint prior on $H_0$ and $q_0$ that generalizes the prior on $H_0$ by SH0ES.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0565530d92319a58a06005dba00a53fc7adf4137

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Riess
2. V. Poulin
3. S. Vagnozzi
4. Ofer Lahav
5. Tanvi Karwal
6. Tristan L. Smith
7. A. Filippenko
8. S. Jha

In Oceanography

1. Ofer Lahav
2. P. Lemos
3. F. Cyr-Racine
4. Paul Shah
5. D. Pinner
6. P. Agrawal
7. L. Randall

Citations in the corpus

• A Comprehensive Measurement of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant with 1 km s−1 Mpc−1 Uncertainty from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SH0ES Team (2021, background): “…value of H0, as may be undertaken in the effort to find a resolution of the Hubble tension, it might be necessary and it is certainly more reliable to explicitly account for the dependence ofH0 on the form of the expansion history, H(z), at low redshifts (Camarena & Marra 2021; Efstathiou 2021).”
• The Ups and Downs of Early Dark Energy solutions to the Hubble tension: A review of models, hints and constraints circa 2023 (2023, background): “[53] David Camarena and Valerio Marra, “On the use of the local prior on the absolute magnitude of Type Ia supernovae in cosmological inference,” Mon.”
• Rock ‘n’ roll solutions to the Hubble tension (2019, methodology): “[151, 152], using a Gaussian prior on H0 can lead to inconsistencies when considering cosmological models that differ significantly from ΛCDM at late times.”
• A buyer’s guide to the Hubble constant (2021, methodology): “To use an H0 prior is then to transform and compress the data away from its true source; it would instead be better to use MB directly and priors for this are given in Camarena and Marra (2021). Another prevalent issue is the selective use of datasets—in particular, BAO provide strong constraints on”