Published February 2025 | Published
Journal Article Open

ZTF SN Ia DR2: Impact of the galaxy cluster environment on the stretch distribution of Type Ia supernovae

  • 1. ROR icon Claude Bernard University Lyon 1
  • 2. ROR icon Trinity College Dublin
  • 3. ROR icon AlbaNova
  • 4. ROR icon Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  • 5. ROR icon Lancaster University
  • 6. ROR icon University of Clermont Auvergne
  • 7. ROR icon Center for Particle Physics of Marseilles
  • 8. ROR icon Duke University
  • 9. ROR icon Institute of Space Sciences
  • 10. ROR icon Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya
  • 11. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 12. ROR icon Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  • 13. ROR icon Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • 14. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley

Abstract

Context. Understanding the impact of the astrophysical environment on Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) properties is crucial to minimize systematic uncertainties in cosmological analyses based on this probe.

Aims. We investigate the dependence of the SN Ia SALT2.4 light-curve stretch on the distance from their nearest galaxy cluster to study the potential effect of the intracluster medium (ICM) environment on the intrinsic properties of SN Ia.

Methods. We used the largest SN Ia sample to date and cross-matched it with existing X-ray, Sunyaev–Zel'dovich, and optical cluster catalogs in order to study the relation between the stretch and the distance to the nearest detected cluster from each SN Ia. We modeled the underlying stretch distribution with a Gaussian mixture with relative amplitudes that depended on redshift and clustercentric distance.

Results. We find that the fit quality of the stretch distribution improves significantly when we included the distance-dependant term in the model with a variation of the Akaike information criterion ΔAIC = −10.2. Because of the known correlation between galaxy age and distance from the cluster center, this supports previous evidence that the age of the stellar population is the underlying driver of the bimodal shape of the SN Ia stretch distribution. We further computed the evolution of the fraction of quenched galaxies as a function of distance with respect to cluster center from our best-fit model of the SNe Ia stretch distribution and compared it to previous results obtained from Hα line measurements, optical broadband photometry, and simulations. We find our estimate to be compatible with these results.

Conclusions. The results of this work indicate that SNe Ia searches at high redshift targeted toward clusters to maximize detection probability should be considered with caution as the stretch distribution of the detected sample would be strongly biased toward the old subpopulation of SNe Ia. Furthermore, the effect of the ICM environment on the SN Ia properties appears to be significant from the center of the clusters up to their splashback radius. This is compatible with previous works based on observations and simulations of a galaxy age gradient with respect to clustercentric distance in massive cluster halos. The next generation of large-area surveys will provide an increase of an order of magnitude in the size of SN Ia and cluster catalogs. This will enable us to analyze the impact of cluster mass on the intrinsic properties of SNe Ia and of the fraction of quenched galaxies in the outskirts of clusters in more detail, where direct measurements are challenging.

Copyright and License

© The Authors 2025.

Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

Based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope 48-inch and the 60-inch Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility project. ZTF is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. AST-1440341 and AST-2034437 and a collaboration including current partners Caltech, IPAC, the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, the University of Maryland, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron and Humboldt University, the TANGO Consortium of Taiwan, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Trinity College Dublin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, IN2P3, University of Warwick, Ruhr University Bochum, Northwestern University and former partners the University of Washington, Los Alamos National Laboratories, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW. SED Machine is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1106171 The ZTF forced-photometry service was funded under the Heising-Simons Foundation grant #12540303 (PI: Graham). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement n 759194 - USNAC). T.E.M.B. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MCIN), the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI) 10.13039/501100011033, and the European Union Next Generation EU/PRTR funds under the 2021 Juan de la Cierva program FJC2021-047124-I and the PID2020-115253GA-I00 HOSTFLOWS project, from Centro Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) under the PIE project 20215AT016, and the program Unidad de Excelencia Maria de Maeztu CEX2020-001058-M.

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Additional details

Created:
February 20, 2025
Modified:
February 20, 2025