A reassessment of the Pantheon+ and DES 5YR calibration uncertainties: Dovekie

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are crucial tools for measuring the accelerating expansion of the Universe, comprising thousands of SNe across multiple telescopes. Accurate measurements of cosmological parameters with SNe Ia require a robust understanding and cross-calibration of the telescopes and filters. A previous cross-calibration effort, `Fragilistic', provided 25 photometric systems, but offered no public code or ability to add new surveys. We provide a publicly available open-source cross-calibration solution with an eye to the future. By jointly using the Pan-STARRs (PS1) and all-sky telescopes, we characterised the measured filters from 11 photometric systems---including CfA, PS1, Foundation, DES, CSP, SDSS, and SNLS---using published observations of field stars. For the first time, we derived uncertainties on effective filter transmissions and modified filters to match the data. With the addition of direct observations of DA white dwarfs, we simultaneously cross-calibrated our zero points across photometric systems and trained a new SALT model to propagate to cosmology. Gaia With improved uncertainties from DA WDs, we find improvements to the calibration systematic uncertainty of times 1.5 for the Pantheon+ sample, with a new systematic photometric uncertainty of σ_w( ) = 0.013 for FlatwCDM, and modest improvements to that of the DES5YR analysis. We find good agreement with previous calibration and show that even these small calibration changes can be amplified by up to a factor of six in the inferred SN,Ia distances; this is driven by calibration sensitivity in the colour--luminosity relations and SALT training. Initial results indicate that these changes cause dμ/dz = 0.041 ± 0.009 across our redshift range. These may have a potentially larger impact in w0/wa space and on inferences regarding evolving dark energy. phot

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Publication Details

Journal
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Published
2026-06-19
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202555963
Primary Topic
Calibration and Measurement Techniques
Type
preprint
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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preprint

A reassessment of the Pantheon+ and DES 5YR calibration uncertainties: Dovekie

D. O. Jones, Ludovic Lacroix, Erin E. Hayes, L. Galbany et al.
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Calibration and Measurement Techniques
preprint

A reassessment of the Pantheon+ and DES 5YR calibration uncertainties: Dovekie

D. O. Jones, Ludovic Lacroix, Erin E. Hayes, L. Galbany, M Ginolin, R Chen, Suhail Dhawan, W. D. Kenworthy, Cameron Lemon, P. Wiseman, M. Rigault, Benjamin M. Boyd, Matthew Grayling, Dillon Brout, Aaron Do, M. Vincenzi, D Scolnic, Deanna Kuhn, B Popovic, C Barjou-Delayre, Parth Shah, B. Racine, M. G. Smith, A. Goobar
preprint en

Abstract

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are crucial tools for measuring the accelerating expansion of the Universe, comprising thousands of SNe across multiple telescopes. Accurate measurements of cosmological parameters with SNe Ia require a robust understanding and cross-calibration of the telescopes and filters. A previous cross-calibration effort, `Fragilistic', provided 25 photometric systems, but offered no public code or ability to add new surveys. We provide a publicly available open-source cross-calibration solution with an eye to the future. By jointly using the Pan-STARRs (PS1) and all-sky telescopes, we characterised the measured filters from 11 photometric systems---including CfA, PS1, Foundation, DES, CSP, SDSS, and SNLS---using published observations of field stars. For the first time, we derived uncertainties on effective filter transmissions and modified filters to match the data. With the addition of direct observations of DA white dwarfs, we simultaneously cross-calibrated our zero points across photometric systems and trained a new SALT model to propagate to cosmology. Gaia With improved uncertainties from DA WDs, we find improvements to the calibration systematic uncertainty of times 1.5 for the Pantheon+ sample, with a new systematic photometric uncertainty of σ_w( ) = 0.013 for FlatwCDM, and modest improvements to that of the DES5YR analysis. We find good agreement with previous calibration and show that even these small calibration changes can be amplified by up to a factor of six in the inferred SN,Ia distances; this is driven by calibration sensitivity in the colour--luminosity relations and SALT training. Initial results indicate that these changes cause dμ/dz = 0.041 ± 0.009 across our redshift range. These may have a potentially larger impact in w0/wa space and on inferences regarding evolving dark energy. phot

Astronomy and Astrophysics
Centre de physique des particules de Marseille (FR), Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Énergies (FR), Institute of Nuclear Physics of Lyon (FR), Institut de Physique des 2 Infinis de Lyon (FR)
Openalex Percentile: Top 100%
Calibration and Measurement Techniques
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