Comparing the Host Galaxies of Type Ia, Type II and Type Ibc Supernovae

TL;DR

This study compares the host galaxies of different supernova types using SDSS data, revealing distinct stellar populations and galaxy properties associated with each supernova type, and highlighting potential observational biases.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of supernova host galaxy properties across multiple types, emphasizing differences in stellar populations and galaxy classifications, and discusses aperture effects in spectral observations.

Findings

SNe II and Ibc mostly occur in star-forming galaxies with young stellar populations.

SNe Ia are found in both star-forming and AGN/Absorp galaxies, often more massive.

Host galaxy properties vary significantly with supernova type, affecting progenitor understanding.

Abstract

We compare the host galaxies of 902 supernovae, including SNe Ia, SNe II and SNe Ibc, which are selected by cross-matching the Asiago Supernova Catalog with the SDSS Data Release 7. We further selected 213 galaxies by requiring the light fraction of spectral observations $>$15%, which could represent well the global properties of the galaxies. Among them, 135 galaxies appear on the Baldwin-Phillips-Terlevich diagram, which allows us to compare the hosts in terms of star-forming, AGNs (including composites, LINERs and Seyfert 2s) and "Absorp" (their related emission-lines are weak or non-existence) galaxies. The diagrams related to parameters D$_n$(4000), H$\delta_A$, stellar masses, SFRs and specific SFRs for the SNe hosts show that almost all SNe II and most of SNe Ibc occur in SF galaxies, which have a wide range of stellar mass and low D$_n$(4000). The SNe Ia hosts as SF galaxies follow similar trends. A significant fraction of SNe Ia occurs in AGNs and Absorp galaxies, which are massive and have high D$_n$(4000). The stellar population analysis from spectral synthesis fitting shows that the hosts of SNe II have a younger stellar population than hosts of SNe Ia. These results are compared with those of the 689 comparison galaxies where the SDSS fiber captures less than 15% of the total light. These comparison galaxies appear biased towards higher 12+log(O/H) ($\sim$0.1dex) at a given stellar mass. Therefore, we believe the aperture effect should be kept in mind when the properties of the hosts for different types of SNe are discussed.