No Arabic abstract
The properties of low-redshift Type Ia supernovae are investigated using published multi-band optical broadband data from the Calan/Tololo and CfA surveys. The average time evolution of B-V, V-R, R-I, B-I and V-I, the intrinsic dispersion and time correlations are studied. This information is required to deduce the extinction of such explosions from the measured colours. We find that extinction corrections on individual SNe based on their colours up to 40 days past the B-band lightcurve maximum are generaly limited to sigma_{A_V} gsim 0.1, due to intrinsic variations, as far as it can be conservatively deduced with the current sample of data. However, we find that the V-R colour, especially at late times, is consistent with a negligible intrinsic spread, and may be the most accurate estimator for extinction.
It has been reported that the extinction law for Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) may be different from the one in the Milky Way, but the intrinsic color of SNe Ia and the dust extinction are observationally mixed. In this study, we examine photometric properties of SNe Ia in the nearby universe ($z lesssim 0.04$) to investigate the SN Ia intrinsic color and the dust extinction. We focus on the Branch spectroscopic classification of 34 SNe Ia and morphological types of host galaxies. We carefully study their distribution of peak colors on the $B-V$, $V-R$ color-color diagram, as well as the color excess and absolute magnitude deviation from the stretch-color relation of the bluest SNe Ia. We find that SNe Ia which show the reddest color occur in early-type spirals and the trend holds when divided into Branch sub-types. The dust extinction becomes close to the Milky-Way like extinction if we exclude some peculiar red Broad Line (BL) sub-type SNe Ia. Furthermore, two of these red BLs occur in elliptical galaxies, less-dusty environment, suggesting intrinsic color diversity in BL sub-type SNe Ia.
Among the major uncertainties involved in the Chandrasekhar mass models for Type Ia supernovae are the companion star of the accreting white dwarf (or the accretion rate that determines the carbon ignition density) and the flame speed after ignition. We present nucleosynthesis results from relatively slow deflagration (1.5 - 3 % of the sound speed) to constrain the rate of accretion from the companion star. Because of electron capture, a significant amount of neutron-rich species such as ^{54}Cr, ^{50}Ti, ^{58}Fe, ^{62}Ni, etc. are synthesized in the central region. To avoid the too large ratios of ^{54}Cr/^{56}Fe and ^{50}Ti/^{56}Fe, the central density of the white dwarf at thermonuclear runaway must be as low as ltsim 2 e9 gmc. Such a low central density can be realized by the accretion as fast as $dot M gtsim 1 times 10^{-7} M_odot yr^{-1}$. These rapidly accreting white dwarfs might correspond to the super-soft X-ray sources.
The $Lambda$CDM model is the current standard model in cosmology thanks to its ability to reproduce the observations. Its first observational evidence appeared from the type Ia supernovae (SNIa) Hubble diagram. However, there has been some debate in the literature concerning the statistical treatment of SNIa. In this paper we relax the standard assumption that SNIa intrinsic luminosity is independent of the redshift, and we examine whether it may have an impact on the accelerated nature of the expansion of the Universe. In order to be as general as possible, we reconstruct the expansion rate of the Universe through a cubic spline interpolation fitting observations of different probes: SNIa, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), and the high-redshift information from the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We show that when SNIa intrinsic luminosity is not allowed to vary as a function of the redshift, cosmic acceleration is definitely proven in a model-independent approach. However, allowing for a redshift dependence, a non-accelerated reconstruction of the expansion rate is able to fit, as well as $Lambda$CDM, the combination of SNIa and BAO data, both treating the BAO standard ruler $r_d$ as a free parameter, or adding the recently published prior from CMB observations. We further extend the analysis by including the CMB data, and we show that a non-accelerated reconstruction is able to nicely fit this combination of low and high-redshift data. In this work we present a model-independent reconstruction of a non-accelerated expansion rate of the Universe that is able to nicely fit all the main background cosmological probes. However, the predicted value of $H_0$ is in tension with recent direct measurements. Our analysis points out that a final, reliable, and consensual value for $H_0$ would be critical to definitively prove the cosmic acceleration in a model-independent way. [Abridged]
We analyze the mean rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) spectrum of Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) and its dispersion using high signal-to-noise Keck-I/LRIS-B spectroscopy for a sample of 36 events at intermediate redshift (z=0.5) discovered by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). We introduce a new method for removing host galaxy contamination in our spectra, exploiting the comprehensive photometric coverage of the SNLS SNe and their host galaxies, thereby providing the first quantitative view of the UV spectral properties of a large sample of distant SNe Ia. Although the mean SN Ia spectrum has not evolved significantly over the past 40% of cosmic history, precise evolutionary constraints are limited by the absence of a comparable sample of high quality local spectra. Within the high-redshift sample, we discover significant UV spectral variations and exclude dust extinction as the primary cause by examining trends with the optical SN color. Although progenitor metallicity may drive some of these trends, the variations we see are much larger than predicted in recent models and do not follow expected patterns. An interesting new result is a variation seen in the wavelength of selected UV features with phase. We also demonstrate systematic differences in the SN Ia spectral features with SN light curve width in both the UV and the optical. We show that these intrinsic variations could represent a statistical limitation in the future use of high-redshift SNe Ia for precision cosmology. We conclude that further detailed studies are needed, both locally and at moderate redshift where the rest-frame UV can be studied precisely, in order that future missions can confidently be planned to fully exploit SNe Ia as cosmological probes [ABRIDGED].
Type Ia supernovae are bright stellar explosions distinguished by standardizable light curves that allow for their use as distance indicators for cosmological studies. Despite their highly successful use in this capacity, the progenitors of these events are incompletely understood. We describe simulating type Ia supernovae in the paradigm of a thermonuclear runaway occurring in a massive white dwarf star. We describe the multi-scale physical processes that realistic models must incorporate and the numerical models for these that we employ. In particular, we describe a flame-capturing scheme that addresses the problem of turbulent thermonuclear combustion on unresolved scales. We present the results of our study of the systematics of type Ia supernovae including trends in brightness following from properties of the host galaxy that agree with observations. We also present performance results from simulations on leadership-class architectures.