Program: GN-2020B-Q-202

Title:SIRAH: Supernovae in the Infrared avec Hubble
PI:Saurabh Jha
Co-I(s): Mi Dai, Kyle Dettman, Yssavo Camacho-Neves, Daniel Scolnic, Ryan Foley, Adam Riess, David Jones, Rebekah Hounsell, Richard Kessler, Armin Rest, Lou Strolger, Alexei Filippenko, Suhail Dhawan, Lluis Galbany, Steve Rodney, Justin Roberts-Pierel, Kaisey Mandel, Gautham Narayan, Chris Burns, Peter Garnavich, Renee Hlozek, Kara Ponder, Mark Phillips, Maximillian Stritzinger, Andrew Friedman, Robert Kirshner, Patrick Kelly, David Sand, Stefano Valenti, Eric Hsiao, Thomas Holoien, Thomas Matheson, Arturo Avelino, Ori Fox, Russell Ryan, Peter Brown, Curtis McCully, Craig Pellegrino

Abstract

Near-infrared observations of type-Ia supernovae (SN Ia) significantly improve their cosmological utility. Unlike in the optical, where they must be standardized via light-curve shape and color, SN Ia are nearly standard candles in the infrared, showing little intrinsic luminosity variation with reduced sensitivity to dust extinction. We have been approved for joint HST Cycle 27+28 and NOAO/Gemini observations of a sample of 24 Hubble-flow (0.02 < z < 0.07) target-of-opportunity SN Ia. The HST/WFC3 data will provide NIR grism spectroscopy and precisely-calibrated NIR photometry in two epochs, to be supplemented by the Gemini NIRI and FLAMINGOS2 data described here to measure the full NIR light curves. Hubble-flow SN Ia are critical to all cosmological uses of SN Ia. Our program will: (1) establish a legacy sample of well-calibrated SN Ia spectrophotometry covering a continuous rest-frame wavelength range from 0.8 to 1.7 microns as a foundation for WFIRST, (2) yield a 2.7% measurement of H0 with NIR-only observations of SN Ia, and (3) constrain dark energy in concert with data from the RAISINs surveys, producing a NIR Hubble diagram from z = 0.02 to z = 0.6 all calibrated on the WFC3/IR photometric system.