Abstract
Abstract We use a sample of 809 photometrically classified type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) discovered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) along with 40415 field galaxies to calculate the rate of SNe Ia per galaxy in the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.6. We recover the known correlation between SN Ia rate and galaxy stellar mass across a broad range of scales 8.5 ≤ log (M*/M⊙) ≤ 11.25. We find that the SN Ia rate increases with stellar mass as a power-law with index 0.63 ± 0.02, which is consistent with previous work. We use an empirical model of stellar mass assembly to estimate the average star-formation histories (SFHs) of galaxies across the stellar mass range of our measurement. Combining the modelled SFHs with the SN Ia rates to estimate constraints on the SN Ia delay time distribution (DTD), we find the data are fit well by a power-law DTD with slope index β = −1.13 ± 0.05 and normalisation A = 2.11 ± 0.05 × 10−13SNeM⊙−1yr−1,, which corresponds to an overall SN Ia production efficiency $N_{\mathrm{Ia}}/M_* = 0.9 _{-0.7}^{+4.0} \times 10^{-3} \mathrm{SNe} \mathrm{M}_{\odot }^{-1}$,. Upon splitting the SN sample by properties of the light curves, we find a strong dependence on DTD slope with the SN decline rate, with slower-declining SNe exhibiting a steeper DTD slope. We interpret this as a result of a relationship between intrinsic luminosity and progenitor age, and explore the implications of the result in the context of SN Ia progenitors.
Highlights
Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are explosions of white dwarf stars (WDs)
Sub-MCh SNe Ia typically involve the merger of two WDs and the SN luminosity can be correlated with the mass of the primary WD; a correlation between primary WD mass and age leads to different delay time distribution (DTD) of low and high-stretch SNe and the different rates observed in this work
We have measured the rate of SNe Ia per galaxy based on a sample of over 800 SNe and 40,000 galaxies detected by Dark Energy Survey (DES)
Summary
Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are explosions of white dwarf stars (WDs). SNe Ia show diversity in their observed properties, a large fraction of them ("non-peculiar" SNe Ia) display a small dispersion in their peak brightnesses which can be reduced further through empirical relations between brightness and light curve properties, such as decline rate (stretch) or optical colour (Rust 1974; Pskovskii 1977; Phillips 1993; Tripp 1998). Instead of comparing volumetric rates to the cosmic SFH, it is possible to estimate the SFH of individual galaxies through the modelling of their stellar populations via spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting Works such as Totani et al (2008), Maoz et al (2011), Maoz et al (2012), Graur & Maoz (2013), and Graur et al (2015) estimated the DTD by measuring SFHs for a sample of field galaxies and comparing them to the number of SNe detected in each galaxy (the SFHR method), and have led to results that suggest a DTD power law with β consistent with −1.
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