Properties of type Ia supernovae inside rich galaxy clusters

TL;DR

This study compares properties of Type Ia supernovae in rich galaxy clusters versus the field, revealing differences linked to galaxy age and environment, especially in supernova stretch and luminosity.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how supernova properties vary with galaxy environment and age, highlighting differences in stretch distributions between cluster and field SNe Ia.

Findings

Passive galaxies host SNe Ia with smaller stretch and weaker colour-luminosity relation.

Cluster passive galaxies host SNe Ia with even smaller stretch than field passive galaxies.

Older passive galaxies tend to host SNe Ia with smaller stretch, indicating age-related effects.

Abstract

We used the GMBCG galaxy cluster catalogue and SDSS-II supernovae data with redshifts measured by the BOSS project to identify 48 SNe Ia residing in rich galaxy clusters and compare their properties with 1015 SNe Ia in the field. Their light curves were parametrised by the SALT2 model and the significance of the observed differences was assessed by a resampling technique. To test our samples and methods, we first looked for known differences between SNe Ia residing in active and passive galaxies. We confirm that passive galaxies host SNe Ia with smaller stretch, weaker colour-luminosity relation [$\beta$ of 2.54(22) against 3.35(14)], and that are $\sim$ 0.1 mag more luminous after stretch and colour corrections. We show that only 0.02 per cent of random samples drawn from our set of SNe Ia in active galaxies can reach these values. Reported differences in the Hubble residuals scatter could not be detected, possibly due to the exclusion of outliers. We then show that, while most field and cluster SNe Ia properties are compatible at the current level, their stretch distributions are different ($\sim3\sigma$): besides having a higher concentration of passive galaxies than the field, the cluster's passive galaxies host SNe Ia with an average stretch even smaller than those in field passive galaxies (at 95 per cent confidence). We argue that the older age of passive galaxies in clusters is responsible for this effect since, as we show, old passive galaxies host SNe Ia with smaller stretch than young passive galaxies ($\sim4\sigma$).