Infrared surface brightness fluctuations of the Coma elliptical galaxy NGC 4874 and the value of the Hubble constant

We have used the Keck I telescope to measure K-band surface brightness fluctuations (SBFs) of NGC 4874, the dominant elliptical galaxy in the Coma Cluster. We use deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFPC2 optical imaging to account for the contamination due to faint globular clusters and improved analysis techniques to derive measurements of the SBF apparent magnitude. Using a new SBF calibration that accounts for the dependence of K-band SBFs on the integrated color of the stellar population, we measure a distance modulus of 34.99 +/- 0.21 mag (100 +/- 10 Mpc) for the Coma Cluster. The resulting value of the Hubble constant is 71 +/- 8 km s(-1) Mpc(-1), not including any systematic error in the HST Cepheid distance scale.