A 3% SOLUTION: DETERMINATION OF THE HUBBLE CONSTANT WITH THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE AND WIDE FIELD CAMERA 3

By A. Riess, Lucas Macri, S. Casertano, H. Lampeitl, H. Ferguson, A. Filippenko, S. Jha, Weidong Li, Ryan Chornock. 2011

1,261 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to determine the Hubble constant from optical and infrared observations of over 600 Cepheid variables in the host galaxies of eight recent Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), providing the calibration for a magnitude–redshift relation based on 253 SNe Ia. Increased precision over past measurements of the Hubble constant comes from five improvements: (1) more than doubling the number of infrared observations of Cepheids in the nearby SN hosts; (2) increasing the sample size of ideal SN Ia calibrators from six to eight; (3) increasing by 20% the number of Cepheids with infrared observations in the megamaser host NGC 4258; (4) reducing the difference in the mean metallicity of the Cepheid comparison samples between NGC 4258 and the SN hosts from Δlog [O/H] = 0.08 to 0.05; and (5) calibrating all optical Cepheid colors with a single camera, WFC3, to remove cross-instrument zero-point errors. The result is a reduction in the uncertainty in H0 due to steps beyond the first rung of the distance ladder from 3.5% to 2.3%. The measurement of H0 via the geometric distance to NGC 4258 is 74.8 ± 3.1 km s−1 Mpc−1, a 4.1% measurement including systematic uncertainties. Better precision independent of the distance to NGC 4258 comes from the use of two alternative Cepheid absolute calibrations: (1) 13 Milky Way Cepheids with trigonometric parallaxes measured with HST/fine guidance sensor and Hipparcos and (2) 92 Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud for which multiple accurate and precise eclipsing binary distances are available, yielding 74.4 ± 2.5 km s−1 Mpc−1, a 3.4% uncertainty including systematics. Our best estimate uses all three calibrations but a larger uncertainty afforded from any two: H0 = 73.8 ± 2.4 km s−1 Mpc−1 including systematic errors, corresponding to a 3.3% uncertainty. The improved measurement of H0, when combined with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 7 year data, results in a tighter constraint on the equation-of-state parameter of dark energy of w = −1.08 ± 0.10. It also rules out the best-fitting gigaparsec-scale void models, posited as an alternative to dark energy. The combined H0 + WMAP results yield Neff = 4.2 ± 0.7 for the number of relativistic particle species in the early universe, a low-significance excess for the value expected from the three known neutrino flavors.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/97f3d2e8decfc2c6fb717af37cbbc64753f6b155

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Citations in the corpus

COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND CONSTRAINTS ON THE DURATION AND TIMING OF REIONIZATION FROM THE SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE (2011, methodology): “For the ΛCDM cosmological model, we include measurements of the baryon acoustic oscillation feature from SDSS and 2dFGRS (Percival et al. 2010), a measurement of the Hubble constant from the Hubble Space Telescope (Riess et al. 2011), and measurements of the primary CMB from WMAP7 (Larson et al. 201”
CONSTRAINTS ON COSMOLOGY FROM THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND POWER SPECTRUM OF THE 2500 deg2 SPT-SZ SURVEY (2012, methodology): “We pay particular attention to the BAO and H0 measurements, specifically the Anderson et al. (2012) BAO measurement at z = 0.57 and the Riess et al. (2011) determination of H0, because they are highly precise constraints that interact in an interesting way with those from the CMB.”
A tale of two modes: neutrino free-streaming in the early universe (2017, background): “Interestingly, the higher value of the Hubble parameter preferred by the interacting neutrino mode helps alleviate the tension between CMB and local [99, 102] measurements of the present-day expansion rate.”
The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Constraining modified gravity (2016, background): “In addition, several high-precision direct measurements of H0 measure values about 10 per cent higher than those inferred from combinations of Planck and BOSS BAO data (Riess et al. 2011; Freedman et al. 2012; Riess et al. 2016; Alam et al. 2016a).”
The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III DR9 Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: testing deviations from Λ and general relativity using anisotropic clustering of galaxies (2012, methodology): “2 show theoretical predictions of the spatially-flatΛCDM model when a WMAP 7 prior is applied to the relevant cosmological parameters, and the Einstein-DeSitter (EdS) model (Ωm = 1) with H0 = 73.8 ± 2.4km/Mpc/s (as measured by Riess et al. 2011).”
The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS‐III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological implications of the large‐scale two‐point correlation function (2012, background): “The slightly higher value of the Hubble parameter obtained in this case reduces the difference with the measurement of Riess et al. (2011) to the 1 σ level.”
The trouble with H0 (2016, result): “[8]) are consistent with the final results from the WMAP mission, but are in 2-2.”
A MEASUREMENT OF SECONDARY COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND ANISOTROPIES WITH TWO YEARS OF SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS (2011, methodology): “All parameter chains include low-redshift measurements of the Hubble constant H0 using the Hubble Space Telescope (Riess et al. 2011) and the BAO feature using SDSS and 2dFGRS data (Percival et al. 2010).”
COSMICFLOWS-2: THE DATA (2013, methodology): “The good agreement, within 0.01 mag, was shown by Rizzi et al. (2007) and by several authors in the special case of the Maser galaxy NGC4258 (Rizzi et al. 2007; Mager et al. 2008; Riess et al. 2011).”
TOWARD A NEW GEOMETRIC DISTANCE TO THE ACTIVE GALAXY NGC 4258. III. FINAL RESULTS AND THE HUBBLE CONSTANT (2013, methodology): “Riess et al. (2011, 2012) also attempted to recalibrate the Cepheid relation using an unpublished preliminary maser distance to NGC 4258 of 7.28 Mpc ± 3%, obtaining H0,4258 = 74.8 ± 3.1 km s−1 Mpc−1, a fractional accuracy of 4%, where H0,4258 is the Hubble constant determined when the sole anchor…”
Reconciling Planck with the local value of H0 in extended parameter space (2016, methodology): “Assuming standard ΛCDM the Planck data gives H0 = 67.27 ± 0.66 km/s/Mpc that is about two standard deviations away from the Riess et al, 2011 value of H0 = 73.8 ± 2.4 km/s/Mpc ([2]).”
Cosmology and astrophysics from relaxed galaxy clusters - II. Cosmological constraints (2014, methodology): “(vi) We use updated priors on h and Ωbh 2 (Riess et al. 2011; Cooke et al. 2014).”
Elucidating ΛCDM: Impact of Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Measurements on the Hubble Constant Discrepancy (2017, background): “While the constraints have become tighter, the mean H0 values in recent years have remained fairly constant (e.g., Riess et al. 2009, 2011; Freedman et al. 2012).”
QUANTIFYING DISCORDANCE IN THE 2015 PLANCK CMB SPECTRUM (2015, methodology): “…BAO scale measurement from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) ‘CMASS’ galaxy sample at an effective z = 0.57 (An- derson et al. 2014) and the most precise local distance ladder constraint on the Hubble constant, H0 = 73.0 ± 2.4 km s−1 Mpc−1 (Riess et al. 2011; Bennett et al. 2014).”