A Precise Distance Indicator: Type Ia Supernova Multicolor Light Curve Shapes

We present an empirical method that uses multicolor light curve shapes (MLCS) to estimate the luminosity, distance, and total line-of-sight extinction of Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia). The empirical correlation between the MLCS and the luminosity is derived from a ``training set'' of nine SN Ia light curves with independent distance and reddening estimates. We find that intrinsically dim SN Ia are redder and have faster light curves than the bright ones which are slow and blue. By thirty-five days after maximum the intrinsic color variations become negligable. A formal treatment of extinction employing Bayes' theorem is used to estimate the best value and its uncertainty. Applying MLCS to both light curves and to color curves provides enough information to determine which supernovae are dim because they are distant, which are intrinsically dim, and which are dim because of extinction by dust. The precision of the MLCS distances is examined by constructing a Hubble diagram with an independent set of twenty SN Ia's. The dispersion of 0.12 mag indicates a typical distance accuracy of 5 % for a single object, and the intercept yields a Hubble constant on the Cepheid distance scale (Sandage et al 1994, 1996) of H_0=65 \pm 3 (statistical) km/s/Mpc ( \pm 6 total error). The slope of 0.2010 pm 0.0035 mag over the distance interval 32.2 < mu < 38.3 yields the most precise confirmation of the linearity of the Hubble law.