Luminosity Functions of Type Ia Supernovae and their Host Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

TL;DR

This study analyzes the luminosity functions of Type Ia supernovae and their host galaxies from SDSS data, revealing that supernova occurrence correlates mainly with galaxy luminosity and showing minimal impact of host galaxy type on supernova properties.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed luminosity functions for Type Ia supernovae and their hosts from SDSS, highlighting the proportionality to galaxy luminosity and intrinsic color excess characteristics.

Findings

Supernova host galaxy luminosity matches general galaxy field luminosity.

Supernova rate is slightly higher in late-type galaxies, but with large uncertainty.

Supernova luminosity distribution is approximately Gaussian, tighter with light curve corrections.

Abstract

The sample of 137 low-redshift type Ia supernovae with 0.05 < z < 0.3 obtained from the SDSS-II Supernova Survey for the southern equatorial stripe of 300 square degrees is used to derive the luminosity functions of type Ia supernovae and of their host galaxies in the gri passbands. We show that the luminosity function of type Ia supernova host galaxies matches well with that of galaxies in the general field, suggesting that the occurrence of type Ia supernovae does not favour a particular type of galaxies but is predominantly proportional to the luminosity of galaxies. The only evidence that points to possible correlation between the supernova rate and star formation activity is that the supernova rate in late-type galaxies is higher than that in early-type galaxies by 31+/-35%. The sample contains 8 type Ia supernovae whose host galaxies were not identified, but it is shown that their occurrence is consistent with them occurred in low luminous galaxies beyond the survey. The luminosity function of type Ia supernovae is approximately Gaussian with the full-width half maximum being a factor of 1.4 in luminosity. The Gaussian distribution becomes tighter if the ratio of extinction to reddening, R_V, is lower than the characteristic value for the Milky Way and if luminosity is corrected for the light curve shape. The colour excess is ~0.07 mag which is significantly smaller than reddening expected for field galaxies. This colour excess does not vary with the distance of the supernovae from the centre of the host galaxy to 15 kpc. This suggests that the major part of the colour excess appears to be either intrinsic or reddening that arises in the immediate environment of supernova, rather than interstellar reddening in host galaxies.