The rate of type Ia Supernovae and the star formation history

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the rate of type Ia Supernovae relates to galaxy star formation history and how different photometric bands influence this relationship, providing insights into the delay time distribution of supernova progenitors.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the supernova rate's dependence on galaxy color varies with photometric bands and models the rate across galaxy types using different delay time distributions.

Findings

Consistent supernova rate estimates across (U-V) and (B-K) colors.

Excludes only very flat and very narrow delay time distributions.

Approximately 2-3 supernovae per 1000 solar masses of stars formed.

Abstract

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, although the large error bars allow us to exclude only very flat and very narrow DTDs. The number of SNIa from one stellar generation results of ~ 2, 3 events every 1000 Mo of stars formed.