Forward-modelling Milky Way Cepheids: selection effects and physical priors in the Gaia-HST calibration

Abstract

The advent of high-precision Gaia parallaxes for Milky Way Cepheids enables per cent-level calibration of the local distance ladder and the Hubble constant $H_0$. We revisit the Milky Way Cepheid calibration from Gaia EDR3 parallaxes using a fully forward-modelled Bayesian framework that simultaneously infers the period--luminosity relation, the Gaia parallax zero-point offset, and individual stellar distances while explicitly incorporating the disc geometry of the Galaxy through the distance prior and the selection functions specified in two HST SH0ES campaigns. We derive an analytic treatment of the detection probability that accounts for magnitude, parallax, period, and extinction cuts and reduces it to a tractable integral over distance and sky position. Posterior predictive checks show that this generative model matches the observed distributions of parallaxes, magnitudes, and periods. Modelling Galactic structure and survey truncation self-consistently in a Bayesian framework yields period--luminosity parameters that agree with the SH0ES maximum-likelihood values at the ${<}0.5\,\sigma$ level, a consequence of the small intrinsic scatter of the Cepheid period--luminosity relation. Adopting the uniform-in-volume prior recently advocated by H\"og\r{a}s & M\"ortsell (2026), without simultaneously accounting for selection, leads to a ${\sim}\,0.05~\mathrm{mag}$ bias in the period--luminosity zero-point and posterior predictive distributions incompatible with the observed data; this shift is mostly driven by the omission of the selection model, and produces an apparent and unjustified shift in $H_0$ that reflects this mismodelling. A consistent Bayesian treatment of Galactic structure and selection effects reinforces the local distance-ladder determination of $H_0$, and hence the Hubble tension with early-Universe inferences.