No Arabic abstract
We analyse spectroscopic measurements of 122 type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) with z<0.09 discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory, focusing on the properties of the Si II 6355 and Ca II `near-infrared triplet absorptions. We examine the velocities of the photospheric Si II 6355, and the velocities and strengths of the photospheric and high-velocity Ca II, in the context of the stellar mass (Mstellar) and star-formation rate (SFR) of the SN host galaxies, as well as the position of the SN within its host. We find that SNe Ia with faster Si II 6355 tend to explode in more massive galaxies, with the highest velocity events only occuring in galaxies with Mstellar > 3*10^9 solar mass. We also find some evidence that these highest velocity SNe Ia explode in the inner regions of their host galaxies, similar to the study of Wang et al. (2013), although the trend is not as significant in our data. We show that these trends are consistent with some SN Ia spectral models, if the host galaxy stellar mass is interpreted as a proxy for host galaxy metallicity. We study the strength of the high-velocity component of the Ca II near-IR absorption, and show that SNe Ia with stronger high-velocity components relative to photospheric components are hosted by galaxies with low stellar mass, blue colour, and a high sSFR. Such SNe are therefore likely to arise from the youngest progenitor systems. This argues against a pure orientation effect being responsible for high-velocity features in SN Ia spectra and, when combined with other studies, is consistent with a scenario where high-velocity features are related to an interaction between the SN ejecta and circumstellar medium (CSM) local to the SN.
The ejecta velocities of type-Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), as measured by the Si II $lambda 6355$ 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 $Delta c = 0.005 pm 0.014$. Our SALT2 analysis does show evidence for redder high-velocity SN Ia in other samples, including objects from the Carnegie Supernova Project, with a combined sample yielding $Delta c = 0.017 pm 0.007$. When split on velocity, the Foundation SN Ia also do not show a significant difference in Hubble diagram residual, $Delta HR = 0.015 pm 0.049$ mag. Intriguingly, we find that SN Ia ejecta velocity information may be gleaned from photometry, particularly in redder optical bands. For high-redshift SN Ia, these rest-frame red wavelengths will be observed by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Our results also confirm previous work that SN Ia host-galaxy stellar mass is strongly correlated with ejecta velocity: high-velocity SN Ia are found nearly exclusively in high-stellar-mass hosts. However, host-galaxy properties alone do not explain velocity-dependent differences in supernova colors and luminosities across samples. Measuring and understanding the connection between intrinsic explosion properties and supernova environments, across cosmic time, will be important for precision cosmology with SNe Ia.
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 $0.013pm 0.031$ mag for a supernova subsample with data coverage corresponding to the K13 training; at $ll 1sigma$, the step is not significant and lower than previous measurements. Relaxing the data coverage requirement the Hubble residual step with host mass is $0.045pm 0.026$ mag for the larger sample; a calculation using the modes of the distributions, less sensitive to outliers, yields a step of 0.019 mag. The analysis of this article uses K13 inferred luminosities, as distinguished from previous works that use magnitude corrections as a function of SALT2 color and stretch parameters: Steps at $>2sigma $ significance are found in SALT2 Hubble residuals in samples split by the values of their K13 $x(1)$ and $x(2)$ light-curve parameters. $x(1)$ affects the light-curve width and color around peak (similar to the $Delta m_{15}$ and stretch parameters), and $x(2)$ affects colors, the near-UV light-curve width, and the light-curve decline 20 to 30 days after peak brightness. The novel light-curve analysis, increased parameter set, and magnitude corrections of K13 may be capturing features of SN~Ia diversity arising from progenitor stellar evolution.
Correction of Type Ia Supernova brightnesses for extinction by dust has proven to be a vexing problem. Here we study the dust foreground to the highly reddened SN 2012cu, which is projected onto a dust lane in the galaxy NGC 4772. The analysis is based on multi-epoch, spectrophotometric observations spanning 3,300 - 9,200 {AA}, obtained by the Nearby Supernova Factory. Phase-matched comparison of the spectroscopically twinned SN 2012cu and SN 2011fe across 10 epochs results in the best-fit color excess of (E(B-V), RMS) = (1.00, 0.03) and total-to-selective extinction ratio of (RV , RMS) = (2.95, 0.08) toward SN 2012cu within its host galaxy. We further identify several diffuse interstellar bands, and compare the 5780 {AA} band with the dust-to-band ratio for the Milky Way. Overall, we find the foreground dust-extinction properties for SN 2012cu to be consistent with those of the Milky Way. Furthermore we find no evidence for significant time variation in any of these extinction tracers. We also compare the dust extinction curve models of Cardelli et al. (1989), ODonnell (1994), and Fitzpatrick (1999), and find the predictions of Fitzpatrick (1999) fit SN 2012cu the best. Finally, the distance to NGC4772, the host of SN 2012cu, at a redshift of z = 0.0035, often assigned to the Virgo Southern Extension, is determined to be 16.6$pm$1.1 Mpc. We compare this result with distance measurements in the literature.
We present imaging and spectroscopy of a hydrogen-poor superluminous supernova (SLSN) discovered by the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory: iPTF13ajg. At a redshift of z=0.7403, derived from narrow absorption lines, iPTF13ajg peaked at an absolute magnitude M(u,AB)=-22.5, one of the most luminous supernovae to date. The uBgRiz light curves, obtained with the P48, P60, NOT, DCT, and Keck telescopes, and the nine-epoch spectral sequence secured with the Keck and the VLT (covering 3 rest-frame months), are tied together photometrically to provide an estimate of the flux evolution as a function of time and wavelength. The observed bolometric peak luminosity of iPTF13ajg is 3.2x10^44 erg/s, while the estimated total radiated energy is 1.3x10^51 erg. We detect narrow absorption lines of Mg I, Mg II, and Fe II, associated with the cold interstellar medium in the host galaxy, at two different epochs with X-shooter at the VLT. From Voigt-profile fitting, we derive the column densities log N(Mg I)=11.94+-0.06, log N(Mg II)=14.7+-0.3, and log N(Fe II)=14.25+-0.10. These column densities, as well as the Mg I and Mg II equivalent widths of a sample of hydrogen-poor SLSNe taken from the literature, are at the low end of those derived for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), whose progenitors are also thought to be massive stars. This suggests that the environments of SLSNe and GRBs are different. From the nondetection of Fe II fine-structure absorption lines, we derive a strict lower limit on the distance between the supernova and the narrow-line absorbing gas of 50 pc. No host-galaxy emission lines are detected, leading to an upper limit on the unobscured star-formation rate of SFR([OII])<0.07 Msun/yr. Late-time imaging shows the host galaxy of iPTF13ajg to be faint, with g(AB)~27.0 and R(AB)>=26.0 mag, which roughly corresponds to M(B,Vega) >~ -17.7 mag. [abridged]
A string of recent studies has debated the exact form and physical origin of an evolutionary trend between the peak luminosity of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) and the properties of the galaxies that host them. We shed new light on the discussion by presenting an analysis of ~200 low-redshift SNe Ia in which we measure the separation of Hubble residuals (HR; as probes of luminosity) between two host-galaxy morphological types. We show that this separation can test the predictions made by recently proposed models, using an independently and empirically determined distribution of each morphological type in host-property space. Our results are partially consistent with the new HR--age slope, but we find significant scatter in the predictions from different galaxy catalogues. The inconsistency in age illuminates an issue in the current debate that was not obvious in the long-discussed mass models: HR--host-property models are strongly dependent on the methods employed to determine galaxy properties. While our results demonstrate the difficulty in constructing a universal model for age as a proxy for host environment, our results indeed identify evolutionary trends between mass, age, morphology, and HR values, encouraging (or requiring, if such trends are to be accounted for in cosmological studies) further investigation.