We study the pseudo equivalent width of the Si II 4000 feature of Type Ia supernovae in the redshift range 0.0024 < z < 0.634. We find that this spectral indicator correlates with the lightcurve color excess (SALT2 c) as well as previously defined spectroscopic subclasses (Branch types) and the evolution of the Si II 6150 velocity, i.e., the so called velocity gradient. Based on our study of 55 objects from different surveys, we find indications that the Si II 4000 spectral indicator could provide important information to improve cosmological distance measurements with Type Ia supernovae.
Upcoming large-scale ground- and space- based supernova surveys will face a challenge identifying supernova candidates largely without the use of spectroscopy. Over the past several years, a number of supernova identification schemes have been proposed that rely on photometric information only. Some of these schemes use color-color or color-magnitude diagrams; others simply fit supernova data to models. Both of these approaches suffer a number of drawbacks partially addressed in the so-called Bayesian-based supernova classification techniques. However, Bayesian techniques are also problematic …
From a sample of 12 well-observed Type Ia supernovae, we find clear evidence of correlations between early phase (U-B), (V-R), and (V-I) colors and the velocity shifts of the [Fe II] λ7155 and [Ni II] λ7378 nebular lines measured from late-phase spectra. As these lines are thought to trace the ashes of the initial deflagration process, our findings provide additional support to the new paradigm of off-center explosions in Type Ia supernovae, and we interpret these correlations as viewing angle effects in the observed colors. We also show that the nebular velocity shifts are related to the stre…
To understand how best to use observations of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) to obtain precise and accurate distances, we investigate the relations between spectra of SNe Ia and their intrinsic colors. Using a sample of 1630 optical spectra of 255 SNe, based primarily on data from the CfA Supernova Program, we examine how the velocity evolution and line strengths of Si II 6355 and Ca II H&K are related to the B-V color at peak brightness. We find that the maximum-light velocity of Si II 6355 and Ca II H&K and the maximum-light pseudo-equivalent width of Si II 6355 are correlated with intrinsic co…
Past analyses of Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) have identified an irreducible scatter of 5-10% in distance widely attributed to an intrinsic dispersion in luminosity. Another, equally valid, source of this scatter is intrinsic dispersion in color. Misidentification of the true source of this scatter can bias both the retrieved color-luminosity relation and cosmological parameter measurements. The size of this bias depends on the magnitude of the intrinsic color dispersion relative to the distribution of colors that correlate with distance. We produce a realistic simulation of a misattribution of…
Recently, using a large low-redshift sample of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), we discovered a relation between SN Ia ejecta velocity and intrinsic color that improves the distance precision of SNe Ia and reduces potential systematic biases related to dust reddening. No SN Ia cosmological results have yet made a correction for the "velocity-color" relation. To test the existence of such a relation and constrain its properties at high redshift, we examine a sample of 75 SNe Ia discovered and observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II (SDSS-II) Supernova Survey and Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). …
We present the analysis of the first set of low-redshift Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) by the Carnegie Supernova Project. Well-sampled, high-precision optical (ugriBV) and near-infrared (NIR; YJHKs) light curves obtained in a well-understood photometric system are used to provide light-curve parameters, and ugriBVYJH template light curves. The intrinsic colors at maximum light are calibrated to compute optical--NIR color excesses for the full sample, thus allowing the properties of the reddening law in the host galaxies to be studied. A low value of Rv~1.7, is derived when using the entire sampl…
Simulations of Type Ia Supernovae (SNIa) surveys are a critical tool for correcting biases in the analysis of SNIa to infer cosmological parameters. Large scale Monte Carlo simulations include a thorough treatment of observation history, measurement noise, intrinsic scatter models and selection effects. In this paper, we improve simulations with a robust technique to evaluate the underlying populations of SNIa color and stretch that correlate with luminosity. In typical analyses, the standardized SNIa brightness is determined from linear `Tripp' relations between the light curve color and lumi…
We present an updated analysis of the intrinsic colors of SNe Ia using the latest data release of the Carnegie Supernova Project. We introduce a new light-curve parameter very similar to stretch that is better suited for fast-declining events, and find that these peculiar types can be seen as extensions to the population of "normal" SNe Ia. With a larger number of objects, an updated fit to the Lira relation is presented along with evidence for a dependence on the late-time slope of the B-V color-curves with stretch and color. Using the full wavelength range from u to H band, we place constrai…
Carnegie Supernova Project: Fast-Declining Type Ia Supernovae as Cosmological Distance Indicators
Carnegie Observatories（卡内基观测站）；American Public University System（美国公立大学系统）；Independent University, Bangladesh（孟加拉独立大学）；Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science（卡内基科学研究所天文台）；George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University（德克萨斯农工大学乔治·P·辛西娅·伍兹基础物理与天文学研究所）；Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai’i at Manoa（夏威夷大学马诺阿分校天文学研究所）；Planetary Science Institute（行星科学研究所）；Hamburger Sternwarte（汉堡天文台）
Supernova measurements have become a key ingredient in current determinations of cosmological parameters. These sources can however be used as standard candles only after correcting their apparent brightness for a number of effects. In this paper we discuss some limitations imposed by the formalism currently used for such corrections and investigate the impact on cosmological constraints. We show that color corrections are, in general, expected to be biased. In addition, color excesses which do not add a significant scatter to the observed SN brightnesses affect the value of cosmological param…
We investigate the statistical dependence of the peak intrinsic colors of Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) on their expansion velocities at maximum light, measured from the Si II 6355 spectral feature. We construct a new hierarchical Bayesian regression model, accounting for the random effects of intrinsic scatter, measurement error, and reddening by host galaxy dust, and implement a Gibbs sampler and deviance information criteria to estimate the correlation. The method is applied to the apparent colors from BVRI light curves and Si II velocity data for 79 nearby SNe Ia. The apparent color distribut…
Type 1a supernova magnitudes are used to fit cosmological parameters under the assumption the model will fit the observed redshift dependence. We test this assumption with the Union 2.1 compilation of 580 sources. Several independent tests find the existing model fails to account for a significant correlation of supernova color and redshift. The correlation of magnitude residuals relative to the $ΛCDM$ model and $color \times redshift$ has a significance equivalent to 13 standard deviations, as evaluated by randomly shuffling the data. Extending the existing $B-V$ color correction to a relatio…
UV and optical photometry of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) at low redshift have revealed the existence of two distinct color groups, NUV-red and NUV-blue events. The color curves differ primarily by an offset, with the NUV-blue u- color curves bluer than the NUV-red curves by 0.4 mag. For a sample of 23 low-z SNe~Ia observed with Swift, the NUV-red group dominates by a ratio of 2:1. We compare rest-frame UV/optical spectrophotometry of intermediate and high-z SNe Ia with UVOT photometry and HST spectrophotometry of low-z SNe Ia, finding that the same two color groups exist at higher-z, but with …
Analysis of type 1a supernovae observations out to a redshift of $z$=1.6 shows that there is good agreement between the light-curve widths and $(1+z)$ which is usually interpreted as a strong support for time dilation due to an expanding universe. This paper argues that a strong case can be made for a static universe where the supernovae light-curve-width dependence on redshift is due to selection effects. The analysis is based on the principle that it is the total energy (the fluence) and not the peak magnitude that is the best `standard candle' for type 1a supernovae. A simple model using a …
Type Ia supernovae have light curves that have widths and magnitudes that can be used for testing cosmologies and they provide one of the few direct measurements of time dilation. It is shown that the standard analysis that calibrates the light curve against a rest-frame average (such as SALT2) removes all the cosmological information from the calibrated light curves. Consequently type Ia supernovae calibrated with these methods cannot be used to investigate cosmology. The major evidence that supports the hypothesis of a static universe is that the measurements of the widths of the raw light c…
In this work, by applying the redshift tomography method to Joint Light-curve Analysis (JLA) supernova sample, we explore the possible redshift-dependence of stretch-luminosity parameter $α$ and color-luminosity parameter $β$. The basic idea is to divide the JLA sample into different redshift bins, assuming that $α$ and $β$ are piecewise constants. Then, by constraining the $Λ$CDM model, we check the consistency of cosmology-fit results given by the SN sample of each redshift bin. We also adopt the same technique to explore the possible evolution of $β$ in various subsamples of JLA. Using the …
[Abridged] We investigate the use of a wide variety of spectroscopic measurements to determine distances to low-redshift Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia). We consider linear models for predicting distances to SN Ia using light-curve width and color parameters (determined using the SALT2 light-curve fitter) and a spectroscopic indicator, and evaluate the resulting Hubble diagram scatter using a cross-validation procedure. We confirm the ability of spectral flux ratios alone at maximum light to reduce the scatter of Hubble residuals by ~10% with respect to the standard combination of light-curve width…
Observations of many SNe Ia with the UVOT instrument on the Swift satellite has revealed that there exists order to the differences in the UV-OPT colors of normal SNe. We examine UV-OPT color curves for 25 SNe Ia, dividing them into 4 groups, finding that ~1/3 of these SNe Ia have bluer UV-OPT colors than the larger group, with these "NUV-blue" SNe Ia 0.4 mag bluer than the "NUV-red" SNe Ia in u-v. Another group of events feature colors similar to NUV-red SNe Ia in the u-v to uvw1-v colors, but similar to the NUV-blue SNe Ia in the uvm2-v color. We name these events "MUV-blue". The last group …
In response to a recently reported observation of evidence for two classes of Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) distinguished by their brightness in the rest-frame near ultraviolet (NUV), we search for the phenomenon in publicly available light-curve data. We use the SNANA supernova analysis package to simulate SN Ia-light curves in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Supernova Search (SDSS) and the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) with a model of two distinct ultraviolet classes of SNe Ia and a conventional model with a single broad distribution of SN-Ia ultraviolet brightnesses. We compare simulated distri…
While recent supernova cosmology research has benefited from improved measurements, current analysis approaches are not statistically optimal and will prove insufficient for future surveys. This paper discusses the limitations of current supernova cosmological analyses in treating outliers, selection effects, shape- and color-standardization relations, unexplained dispersion, and heterogeneous observations. We present a new Bayesian framework, called UNITY (Unified Nonlinear Inference for Type-Ia cosmologY), that incorporates significant improvements in our ability to confront these effects. W…
We present an analysis of the host galaxy dependencies of Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) from the full three year sample of the SDSS-II Supernova Survey. We rediscover, to high significance, the strong correlation between host galaxy typeand the width of the observed SN light curve, i.e., fainter, quickly declining SNe Ia favor passive host galaxies, while brighter, slowly declining Ia's favor star-forming galaxies. We also find evidence (at between 2 to 3 sigma) that SNe Ia are ~0.1 magnitudes brighter in passive host galaxies, than in star-forming hosts, after the SN Ia light curves have been s…
We present the dependences of the properties of type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) on their host galaxies by analyzing the multi-band lightcurves of 118 spectroscopically confirmed SNe Ia observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Supernova Survey and the spectra of their host galaxies. We derive the equivalent width of the \rm{H}$α$ emission line, star formation rate, and gas-phase metallicity from the spectra and compare these with the lightcurve widths and colors of SNe Ia. In addition, we compare host properties with the deviation of the observed distance modulus corrected for lightcurve par…
Conventional Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) cosmology analyses currently use a simplistic linear regression of magnitude versus color and light curve shape, which does not model intrinsic SN Ia variations and host galaxy dust as physically distinct effects, resulting in low color-magnitude slopes. We construct a probabilistic generative model for the dusty distribution of extinguished absolute magnitudes and apparent colors as the convolution of a intrinsic SN Ia color-magnitude distribution and a host galaxy dust reddening-extinction distribution. If the intrinsic color-magnitude ($M_B$ vs. $B-V$)…
We use a sample of 121 spectroscopically normal Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) to show that their intrinsic color is correlated with their ejecta velocity, as measured from the blueshift of the Si II 6355 feature near maximum brightness, v_Si. The SN Ia sample was originally used by Wang et al. (2009) to show that the relationship between color excess and peak magnitude, which in the absence of intrinsic color differences describes a reddening law, was different for two subsamples split by v_Si (defined as "Normal" and "High-Velocity"). We verify this result, but find that the two subsamples have…
We employ 76 type Ia supernovae with optical spectrophotometry within 2.5 days of B-band maximum light obtained by the Nearby Supernova Factory to derive the impact of Si and Ca features on supernovae intrinsic luminosity and determine a dust reddening law. We use the equivalent width of Si II λ4131 in place of light curve stretch to account for first-order intrinsic luminosity variability. The resultant empirical spectral reddening law exhibits strong features associated with Ca II and Si II λ6355. After applying a correction based on the Ca II H&K equivalent width we find a reddening law con…
We examine the absolute magnitudes and light-curve shapes of 14 nearby(redshift z = 0.004--0.027) Type Ia supernovae (SNe~Ia) observed in the ultraviolet (UV) with the Swift Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope. Colors and absolute magnitudes are calculated using both a standard Milky Way (MW) extinction law and one for the Large Magellanic Cloud that has been modified by circumstellar scattering. We find very different behavior in the near-UV filters (uvw1_rc covering ~2600-3300 A after removing optical light, and u ~3000--4000 A) compared to a mid-UV filter (uvm2 ~2000-2400 A). The uvw1_rc-b colors…
We present bolometric light curves constructed from multi-wavelength photometry of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) from the Carnegie Supernova Project and the CfA Supernova Group, using near-infrared observations to provide robust constraints on host galaxy dust extinction. This set of light curves form a well-measured reference set for comparison with theoretical models. Ejected mass and synthesized $^{56}$Ni mass are inferred for each SN Ia from its bolometric light curve using a semi-analytic Bayesian light curve model, and fitting formulae provided in terms of light curve width parameters from…
Type Ia supernovae result when carbon-oxygen white dwarfs in binary systems accrete mass from companion stars, reach a critical mass, and explode. The near uniformity of their light curves makes these supernovae good standard candles for measuring cosmic expansion, but a correction must be applied to account for the fact that the brighter supernovae have broader light curves. One-dimensional modelling, with a certain choice of parameters, can reproduce this general trend in the width-luminosity relation, but the processes of ignition and detonation have recently been shown to be intrinsically …
We describe a new formalism to fit the parameters $α$ and $β$ that are used in the SALT2 model to determine the standard magnitudes of Type Ia supernovae. The new formalism describes the intrinsic scatter in Type Ia supernovae by a covariance matrix in place of the single parameter normally used. We have applied this formalism to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Supernova Survey (SDSS-II) data and conclude that the data are best described by $α=0.135_{-.017}^{+.033}$ and $β=3.19_{-0.24}^{+0.14}$, where the error is dominated by the uncertainty in the form of the intrinsic scatter matrix. Our resul…
A new method to study the intrinsic color and luminosity of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is presented. A metric space built using principal component analysis (PCA) on spectral series SNe Ia between -12.5 and +17.5 days from B maximum is used as a set of predictors. This metric space is built to be insensitive to reddening. Hence, it does not predict the part of color excess due to dust-extinction. At the same time, the rich variability of SN Ia spectra is a good predictor of a large fraction of the intrinsic color variability. Such metric space is a good predictor of the epoch when the maximum…
The photometric properties of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) in the near-infrared as garnered from observations made over the last 30 years are reviewed. During this period, light curves for more than 120 nearby SNe Ia have been published, revealing considerable homogeneity but also some fascinating differences. These data have confirmed that, for all but the fastest declining objects, SNe Ia are essentially perfect standard candles in the near-infrared, displaying only a slight dependence of peak luminosity on decline rate and color.
We present data from the Supernova Cosmology Project for five high redshift Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) that were obtained using the NICMOS infrared camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. We add two SNe from this sample to a rest-frame I-band Hubble diagram, doubling the number of high redshift supernovae on this diagram. This I-band Hubble diagram is consistent with a flat universe (Omega_Matter, Omega_Lambda= 0.29, 0.71). A homogeneous distribution of large grain dust in the intergalactic medium (replenishing dust) is incompatible with the data and is excluded at the 5 sigma confidence level,…
For spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia supernovae we evaluate models of intrinsic brightness variations with detailed data/Monte Carlo comparisons of the dispersion in the following quantities: Hubble-diagram scatter, color difference (B-V-c) between the true B-V color and the fitted color (c) from the SALT-II light curve model, and photometric redshift residual. The data sample includes 251 ugriz light curves from the 3-season Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II, and 191 griz light curves from the Supernova Legacy Survey 3-year data release. We find that the simplest model of a wavelength-independen…
We have analyzed multi-band light curves of 328 intermediate redshift (0.05 <= z < 0.24) type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey (SDSS-II SN Survey). The multi-band light curves were parameterized by using the Multi-band Stretch Method, which can simply parameterize light curve shapes and peak brightness without dust extinction models. We found that most of the SNe Ia which appeared in red host galaxies (u - r > 2.5) don't have a broad light curve width and the SNe Ia which appeared in blue host galaxies (u - r < 2.0) have a variety of light cur…
Large planned photometric surveys will discover hundreds of thousands of supernovae (SNe), outstripping the resources available for spectroscopic follow-up and necessitating the development of purely photometric methods to exploit these events for cosmological study. We present a light-curve fitting technique for SN Ia photometric redshift (photo-z) estimation in which the redshift is determined simultaneously with the other fit parameters. We implement this "LCFIT+Z" technique within the frameworks of the MLCS2k2 and SALT-II light-curve fit methods and determine the precision on the redshift …
The use of Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) as cosmological tools has motivated significant effort to: understand what drives the intrinsic scatter of SN Ia distance modulus residuals after standardization, characterize the distribution of SN Ia colors, and explain why properties of the host galaxies of the SNe correlate with SN Ia distance modulus residuals. We use a compiled sample of $\sim1450$ spectroscopically confirmed, photometric light-curves of SN Ia and propose a solution to these three problems simultaneously that also explains an empirical 11$σ$ detection of the dependence of Hubble res…
In this paper we study the "standardized candle method" using a sample of 37 nearby (z<0.06) Type II plateau supernovae having BVRI photometry and optical spectroscopy. An analytic procedure is implemented to fit light curves, color curves, and velocity curves. We find that the V-I color toward the end of the plateau can be used to estimate the host-galaxy reddening with a precision of 0.2 mag. The correlation between plateau luminosity and expansion velocity previously reported in the literature is recovered. Using this relation and assuming a standard reddening law (Rv = 3.1), we obtain Hubb…
Kim et al. (2013) [K13] introduced a new methodology for determining peak-brightness absolute magnitudes of type Ia supernovae from multi-band light curves. We examine the relation between their parameterization of light curves and Hubble residuals, based on photometry synthesized from the Nearby Supernova Factory spectrophotometric time series, with global host-galaxy properties. The K13 Hubble residual step with host mass is $0.013\pm 0.031$ mag for a supernova subsample with data coverage corresponding to the K13 training; at $\ll 1σ$, the step is not significant and lower than previous mea…
PTF10ops is a Type Ia supernova (SN Ia), whose lightcurve and spectral properties place it outside the current SN Ia subtype classifications. Its spectra display the characteristic lines of subluminous SNe Ia, but it has a normal-width lightcurve with a long rise-time, typical of normal luminosity SNe Ia. The early-time optical spectra of PTF10ops were modelled using a spectral fitting code and found to have all the lines typically seen in subluminous SNe Ia, without the need to invoke more uncommon elements. The host galaxy environment of PTF10ops is also unusual with no galaxy detected at th…
Phenomenological relations exist between the peak luminosity and other observables of type Ia supernovae (SNe~Ia), that allow one to standardize their peak luminosities. However, several issues are yet to be clarified: SNe~Ia show color variations after the standardization. Also, individual SNe~Ia can show residuals in their standardized peak absolute magnitude at the level of $\sim 0.15$ mag. In this paper, we explore how the color and luminosity residual are related to the wavelength shift of nebular emission lines observed at $\gsim 150$ days after maximum light. A sample of 11 SNe Ia which…
The spectral energy distribution (SED) sequence for type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) is modeled by an artificial neural network. The SN Ia luminosity is characterized as a function of phase, wavelength, a color parameter and a decline rate parameter. After training and testing the neural network, the SED sequence could give both the spectrum with wavelength range from 3000Å~to 8000Å~ and the light curve with phase from 20 days before to 50 days after the maximum luminosity for the supernovae with different colors and decline rates. Therefore, we call this the Artificial Neural Network Spectral Light…
We investigate limits on the extinction values of Type Ia supernovae to statistically determine the most probable color excess, E(B-V), with galactocentric distance, and use these statistics to determine the absorption-to-reddening ratio, $R_V$, for dust in the host galaxies. We determined pixel-based dust mass surface density maps for 59 galaxies from the Key Insight on Nearby Galaxies: a Far-Infrared Survey with \textit{Herschel} (KINGFISH, Kennicutt et al. (2011)). We use Type Ia supernova spectral templates (Hsiao et al. 2007) to develop a Monte Carlo simulation of color excess E(B-V) with…
The luminosities of Type Ia supernovae (SNe), the thermonuclear explosions of white-dwarf stars, vary systematically with their intrinsic color and the rate at which they fade. From images taken with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), we identified SNe Ia that erupted in environments that have high ultraviolet surface brightness and star-formation surface density. When we apply a steep model extinction law, we calibrate these SNe using their broadband optical light curves to within ~0.065 to 0.075 magnitudes, corresponding to <4% in distance. The tight scatter, probably arising from a smal…
Observations in the near- and mid-ultraviolet (NUV: 2000--3500$Å$) performed with the NASA Swift UVOT instrument have revealed that optically-normal SNe Ia feature NUV-optical color evolution that can be divided into NUV-blue and NUV-red groups, with roughly one-third of the observed events exhibiting NUV-blue color curves. Combined with an apparent correlation between NUV-blue events and the detection of unburned carbon in the optical spectra, the grouping might point to a fundamental difference within the normal SN Ia classfication. Recognizing the dramatic temporal evolution of the NUV-opti…
We develop an empirical color-based standardization for Type II supernovae (SNe II), equivalent to the classical surface brightness method given in Wesselink (1969). We calibrate it with SNe II with host galaxy distance measured with Cepheids, and well-constrained shock breakout epoch and extinction due to the host galaxy. We estimate the reddening with an analysis of the B-V versus V-I color-color curves, similar to that of Natali et al. (1994). With four SNe II meeting the above requirements, we build a photospheric magnitude versus color diagram (similar to an HR diagram) with a dispersion …
The scaling of the rate of type Ia Supernovae (SNIa) with the parent galaxies' color provides information on the distribution of the delay times (DTD) of the SNIa progenitors. We show that this information appears to depend on the photometric bands used to trace the stellar age distribution and mass-to-light ratio in the parent galaxies. Using both (U-V) and (B-K) colors to constrain the star formation history, we model the SNIa rate as a function of morphological galaxy type for different DTDs. The comparison with the observed rate per unit B and K band luminosity yields consistent results, a…
The ejected mass distribution of type Ia supernovae directly probes progenitor evolutionary history and explosion mechanisms, with implications for their use as cosmological probes. Although the Chandrasekhar mass is a natural mass scale for the explosion of white dwarfs as type Ia supernovae, models allowing type Ia supernovae to explode at other masses have attracted much recent attention. Using an empirical relation between the ejected mass and the light curve width, we derive ejected masses $M_\mathrm{ej}$ and $^{56}$Ni masses $M_\mathrm{Ni}$ for a sample of 337 type Ia supernovae with red…
The ejecta velocities of type-Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), as measured by the Si II $λ6355$ line, have been shown to correlate with other supernova properties, including color and standardized luminosity. We investigate these results using the Foundation Supernova Survey, with a spectroscopic data release presented here, and photometry analyzed with the SALT2 light-curve fitter. We find that the Foundation data do not show significant evidence for an offset in color between SNe Ia with high and normal photospheric velocities, with $Δc = 0.005 \pm 0.014$. Our SALT2 analysis does show evidence for re…
We present Keck high-quality rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) through optical spectra of 21 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) in the redshift range 0.11 < z < 0.37 and a mean redshift of 0.22 that were discovered during the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II (SDSS-II) SN Survey. Using the broad-band photometry of the SDSS survey, we are able to reconstruct the SN host-galaxy spectral energy distributions (SEDs), allowing for a correction for the host-galaxy contamination in the SN Ia spectra. Comparison of composite spectra constructed from a subsample of 17 high-quality spectra to those created from a low-reds…
We investigate strongly gravitationally lensed type II supernovae (LSNe II) for time-delay cosmography incorporating microlensing effects, which expands on previous microlensing studies of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). We use the radiative-transfer code ${\rm \small TARDIS}$ to recreate five spectra of the prototypical SN 1999em at different times within the plateau phase of the light curve. The microlensing-induced deformations of the spectra and light curves are calculated by placing the SN into magnification maps generated with the code ${\rm \small GERLUMPH}$. We study the impact of microle…
In a recent paper, we investigated possible systematic uncertainties related to the Cepheid color-luminosity calibration method and their influence on the tension between the Hubble constant as inferred from distances to Type Ia supernovae and the cosmic microwave background as measured with the Planck satellite. Here, we study the impact of other sources of uncertainty in the supernova distance ladder, including Cepheid temperature and metallicity variations, supernova magnitudes and GAIA parallax distances. Using Cepheid data in 19 Type Ia supernova host galaxies from Riess et al (2016), anc…
We investigate the identification of hydrogen-poor superluminous supernovae (SLSNe I) using a photometric analysis, without including an arbitrary magnitude threshold. We assemble a homogeneous sample of previously classified SLSNe I from the literature, and fit their light curves using Gaussian processes. From the fits, we identify four photometric parameters that have a high statistical significance when correlated, and combine them in a parameter space that conveys information on their luminosity and color evolution. This parameter space presents a new definition for SLSNe I, which can be u…
We explore the properties of Type II-Plateau (II-P) supernovae (SNe) together with their red-supergiant (RSG) star progenitors. Using MESA STAR, we modulate the parameters (e.g., mixing length, overshoot, rotation, metallicity) that control the evolution of a 15Msun main-sequence star to produce a variety of physical pre-SN models and SN II-P ejecta. We extend previous modeling of SN II-P radiation to include photospheric and nebular phases, as well as multi-band light curves and spectra. Our treatment does not assume local thermodynamic equilibrium, is time dependent, treats explicitly the ef…
High-dispersion observations of the Na I D 5890, 5896 and K I 7665, 7699 interstellar lines, and the diffuse interstellar band at 5780 Angstroms in the spectra of 32 Type Ia supernovae are used as an independent means of probing dust extinction. We show that the dust extinction of the objects where the diffuse interstellar band at 5780 Angstroms is detected is consistent with the visual extinction derived from the supernova colors. This strongly suggests that the dust producing the extinction is predominantly located in the interstellar medium of the host galaxies and not in circumstellar mate…
We aim to present 70 spectra of 68 new high-redshift type Ia supernovae (SNeIa) measured at ESO's VLT during the final two years of operation (2006-2008) of the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). We use the full five year SNLS VLT spectral set to investigate a possible spectral evolution of SNeIa populations with redshift and study spectral properties as a function of lightcurve fit parameters and the mass of the host-galaxy. Reduction and extraction are based on both IRAF standard tasks and our own reduction pipeline. Redshifts are estimated from host-galaxy lines whenever possible or alternativ…
The faster light-curve evolution of low-luminosity Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) suggests that they could result from the explosion of white dwarf (WD) progenitors below the Chandrasekhar mass ($M_{\rm Ch}$). Here we present 1D non-LTE time-dependent radiative transfer simulations of pure central detonations of carbon-oxygen WDs with a mass ($M_\rm{tot}$) between 0.88 M$_{\odot}$ and 1.15 M$_{\odot}$, and a $^{56}\rm{Ni}$ yield between 0.08 M$_{\odot}$ and 0.84 M$_{\odot}$. Their lower ejecta density compared to $M_{\rm Ch}$ models results in a more rapid increase of the luminosity at early time…
