Special Astronomy & Astrophysics Colloquium: Infrared Observations of Supernovae: the best path to constraining dark energy

Abstarct:

Thermonuclear supernovae are powerful tools for measuring cosmic distances. They lie at the heart of the local determinations of the Hubble constant and were the tools for discovering cosmic acceleration. But narrowing the uncertainties on the nature of dark energy demands even better control of systematic errors. Fortunately, SN Ia are even better standard candles in the near infrared than they are at visible wavelengths. Absorption by dust is also less troublesome in the infrared. I will report on the "RAISIN" program that uses 22 Type IA supernovae discovered with PanSTARRS and followed up in the near-IR with the Hubble Space Telescope to demonstrate this new approach to constraining the properties of dark energy.