The Hubble Space Telescope Cluster Supernova Survey. V. Improving the dark-energy constraints above z > 1 and building an early-type-hosted supernova sample

We present Advanced Camera for Surveys, NICMOS, and Keck adaptive-optics-assisted photometry of 20TypeIa supernovae (SNeIa) from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Cluster Supernova Survey. The SNeIa were discovered over the redshift interval 0.623 < z < 1.415. Of these SNeIa, 14 pass our strict selection cuts and are used in combination with the world's sample of SNeIa to derive the best current constraints on dark energy. Of our new SNeIa, 10 are beyond redshift z = 1, thereby nearly doubling the statistical weight of HST-discovered SNeIa beyond this redshift. Our detailed analysis corrects for the recently identified correlation between SNIa luminosity and host galaxy mass and corrects the NICMOS zero point at the count rates appropriate for very distant SNeIa. Adding these SNe improves the best combined constraint on dark-energy density, ρDE(z), at redshifts 1.0 < z < 1.6 by 18% (including systematic errors). For a flat ΛCDM universe, we find ΩΛ = 0.729±0.014 (68% confidence level (CL) including systematic errors). For a flat wCDM model, we measure a constant dark-energy equation-of-state parameter w = -1.013-0.073 +0.068 (68% CL). Curvature is constrained to ∼0.7% in the owCDM model and to ∼2% in a model in which dark energy is allowed to vary with parameters w 0 and wa . Further tightening the constraints on the time evolution of dark energy will require several improvements, including high-quality multi-passband photometry of a sample of several dozen z > 1 SNeIa. We describe how such a sample could be efficiently obtained by targeting cluster fields with WFC3 on board HST. The updated supernova Union2.1 compilation of 580 SNe is available at http://supernova.lbl.gov/Union. © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.