Type II-P supernovae as standard candles: The SDSS-II sample revisited

We revisit the observed correlation between the Hβ and Fe ii velocities for Type II-P supernovae (SNe II-P) using 28 optical spectra of 13 SNe II-P and demonstrate that it is well modeled by a linear relation with a dispersion of about 300 km s^-1. Using this correlation, we re-analyze the publicly available sample of SNe II-P compiled by D'Andrea et al. and find a Hubble diagram with an intrinsic scatter of 11% in distance, which is nearly as tight as that measured before their sample is added to the existing set. The larger scatter reported in their work is found to be systematic, and most of it can be alleviated by measuring the Hβ rather than Fe ii velocities, due to the low signal-to-noise ratios and early epochs at which many of the optical spectra were obtained. Their sample, while supporting the mounting evidence that SNe II-P are good cosmic rulers, is biased toward intrinsically brighter objects and is not a suitable set to improve upon SN II-P correlation parameters. This will await a dedicated survey.