How old are SN Ia Progenitor Systems? New Observational Constraints on the Distribution of Time Delays from GALEX

TL;DR

This study constrains the age of Type Ia supernova progenitors by analyzing host galaxy observations, revealing most have delays of hundreds of millions to a few billion years, supporting the single-degenerate progenitor model.

Contribution

It provides new observational constraints on the distribution of time delays for SNe Ia using ultraviolet and optical data, favoring the single-degenerate progenitor scenario.

Findings

Early-type hosts lack prompt SNe Ia with delays <100 Myr.

Approximately 70% of SNe Ia have delays between 275 Myr and 1.25 Gyr.

At least 20% of SNe Ia have delays exceeding 1 Gyr.

Abstract

The time delay between the formation of the progenitor systems of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) and their detonation is a vital discriminant between the various progenitor scenarios that have been proposed for them. We use SDSS optical and GALEX ultraviolet observations of the early-type host galaxies of 21 nearby SNe Ia and quantify the presence or absence of any young stellar population to constrain the minimum time delay for each supernova. We find that early-type host galaxies lack `prompt' SNe Ia with time delays of <100 Myr and that ~70% SNe Ia have minimum time delays of 275 Myr -- 1.25 Gyr, with a median of 650 Myr, while at least 20% SNe Ia have minimum time delays of at least 1 Gyr at 95% confidence and two of these four SNe Ia are are likely older than 2 Gyr. The distribution of minimum time delays observed matches most closely the expectation for the single-degenerate channel with a main sequence donor. Furthermore, we do not find any evidence that sub-luminous SNe Ia are associated with long time delays.