Cosmicflows-2: SNIa Calibration and H0

Abstract

The construction of the Cosmicflows-2 compendium of distances involves the merging of distance measures contributed by the following methods: (Cepheid) Period-Luminosity, Tip of the Red Giant Branch (TRGB), Surface Brightness Fluctuation (SBF), Luminosity-Linewidth (TF), Fundamental Plane (FP), and Type Ia supernova (SNIa). The method involving SNIa is at the top of an interconnected ladder, providing accurate distances to well beyond the expected range of distortions to Hubble flow from peculiar motions. In this paper, the SNIa scale is anchored by 36 TF spirals with Cepheid or TRGB distances, 56 SNIa hosts with TF distances, and 61 groups or clusters hosting SNIa with Cepheid, SBF, TF, or FP distances. With the SNIa scale zero point set, a value of the Hubble Constant is evaluated over a range of redshifts 0.03 < z < 0.5, assuming a cosmological model with Omega_m = 0.27 and Omega_Lambda = 0.73. The value determined for the Hubble Constant is H0 = 75.9 \pm 3.8 km s-1 Mpc-1.