# Publications associated with Particle Theory

## Is there really a `Hubble tension'?

arXiv (2019)

M Rameez, SUBIR Sarkar

Errors in redshift measurements as small as $\Delta z \sim 0.0001$ can have significant impact on the value of inferred cosmological parameters such as $H_0$ (Davis et al. 2019). We have earlier reported that the redshifts of over 100 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) which are in common between the SDSSII-SNLS3 Joint Lightcurve Analysis (JLA) catalogue (Betoule et al. 2014) and the subsequent Pantheon compilation (Scolnic et al. 2018) are discrepant - some by as much as $\Delta z \sim 0.1$ (Rameez 2019a). We study the impact of this on the inferred value of $H_0$ using calibrations of the supernova absolute magnitude via the 'local distance ladder' (Riess et al. 2016). For supernovae with $\Delta z &gt; 0.025$, the JLA redshifts favour $H_0 \sim 72$~km~s$^{-1}$Mpc$^{-1}$, while the Pantheon redshifts favour $H_0 \sim 68$~km~s$^{-1}$Mpc$^{-1}$. For comparison the value inferred (assuming the flat $\Lambda$CDM model) from the Planck data on CMB anisotropies is $H_0 \sim 67.4 \pm 0.5$~km~s$^{-1}$Mpc$^{-1}$ (Aghanim et al. 2018). Thus the systematic uncertainties that apparently still plague the distance ladder measurement of $H_0$ undermine the significance of the discrepancy claimed by Riess et al. (2019).

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