The Standardized Candle Method for Type II Plateau Supernovae

OLIVARES; HAMUY; PIGNATA; MAZA; BERSTEN; PHILLIPS; SUNTZEFF; FILIPPENKO; MORREL; KIRSHNER; MATHESON

ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2010 vol. 715 p. 833 - 853

0004-637X

In this paper, we study the "standardized candle method" using a sample of 37 nearby (redshift z < 0.06) Type II plateau supernovae having BVRI photometry and optical spectroscopy. An analytic procedure is implemented to fit light curves, color curves, and velocity curves. We find that the V-I color toward the end of the plateau can be used to estimate the host-galaxy reddening with a precision of sigma(AV) = 0.2 mag. The correlation between plateau luminosity and expansion velocity previously reported in the literature is recovered. Using this relation and assuming a standard reddening law (RV= 3.1), we obtain Hubble diagrams (HDs) in the BVI bands with dispersions of ~0.4 mag. Allowing RV to vary and minimizing the spread in the HDs, we obtain a dispersion range of 0.25-0.30 mag, which implies that these objects can deliver relative distances with precisions of 12%-14%. The resulting best-fit value of RV is 1.4 +- 0.1.