Infrared surface brightness fluctuations of the Coma elliptical galaxy NGC4874 and the value of the Hubble constant

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