15–17 Sept 2026
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Europe/Bucharest timezone

Progenitor Age Bias in Type Ia Supernova Cosmology: Implications for Dark Energy and Cosmological Tensions

17 Sept 2026, 10:30
30m
Main Building (Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania)

Main Building

Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Kogalniceanu Street no 1, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Speaker

Junhyuk Son (Yonsei University)

Description

Supernova (SN) cosmology is based on the key assumption that the luminosity standardization process of Type Ia SNe remains invariant with progenitor age. However, direct and extensive age measurements of SN host galaxies reveal a significant ($5.5 \sigma$) correlation between standardized SN magnitude and progenitor age, which is expected to introduce a serious systematic bias with redshift in SN cosmology. This systematic bias is largely uncorrected by the commonly used mass-step correction, as progenitor age and host galaxy mass evolve very differently with redshift. After correcting for this age-bias as a function of redshift, the SN dataset aligns more closely with the $w_0w_a$CDM model recently suggested by the DESI BAO project from a combined analysis using only BAO and CMB data. This result is further supported by an evolution-free test that uses only SNe from young, coeval host galaxies across the full redshift range. When the three cosmological probes (SNe, BAO, CMB) are combined, we find a significantly stronger ($>9\sigma$) tension with the $\Lambda$CDM model than that reported in the DESI papers, suggesting a time-varying dark energy equation of state in a currently non-accelerating universe.

Topic Cosmology, Dark energy, Hubble tension

Author

Junhyuk Son (Yonsei University)

Co-authors

Dr Chul Chung (Yonsei University) Dr Hyejeon Cho (Yonsei University) Dr Seunghyun Park (Yonsei University) Young-Wook Lee (Yonsei University)

Presentation materials

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