http://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01065
State-of-the art photometric measurements of extragalactic Cepheids account for the mean additional light due to chance superposition of Cepheids on crowded backgrounds through the use of artificial star measurements. However, light from stars physically associated with Cepheids may bias relative distance measurements if the changing spatial resolution along the distance ladder significantly alters the amount of associated blending. We have identified two regimes where this phenomenon may occur: Cepheids in wide binaries and open clusters. We estimate stellar association bias using the photometric passbands and reddening-free Wesenheit magnitudes used to set up the Riess et al. (2016) distance scale. For wide binaries, we rely on Geneva stellar evolution models in conjunction with detailed statistics on intermediate-mass binary stars. For the impact of cluster stars, we have compiled information on the frequency of Cepheids occurring in clusters and measured the typical cluster contribution in M31 via deep HST imaging provided by the PHAT project. We find that the dominant effect on the distance scale comes from Cepheids in clusters, despite cluster Cepheids being a relatively rare phenomenon. Wide binaries have a negligible effect on $H_0$ that is on the order of $0.004\%$ for long-period Cepheids observed in the near-infrared or when considering Wesenheit magnitudes. We estimate that blending due to cluster populations has previously resulted in an overestimate of $H_0$ by approximately $0.2\%$. Correcting for this bias, we obtain $H_0 = 73.06 \pm 1.76\,\mathrm{km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$, which remains in $3.3\sigma$ tension with the Planck value. We conclude that stellar association bias does not constitute a limit for measuring $H_0$ with an accuracy of $1\%$.
R. Anderson and A. Riess
Tue, 5 Dec 17
44/96
Comments: 18 pages, 10 figures. Submitted to AAS journals; comments welcome
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