On the Global and Local Environmental Dependence of Type Ia Supernova Luminosity from the Analysis of SALT2 and MLCS2k2 Light-Curve Fitters

  • Kim, Young-Lo (Center for Galaxy Evolution Research & Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University) ;
  • Lee, Young-Wook (Center for Galaxy Evolution Research & Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University)
  • Published : 2019.04.10

Abstract

There is growing evidence for the dependence of Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) luminosities on the environments. The origin of this correlation, however, is under debate. In order to explore the physical origin of the trend in detail, we analyze SN Ia light-curves by combining a sample of 1231 SNe Ia over a wide redshift range (0.01 < z < 1.37) in various SN surveys and employing two independent light-curve fitters of SALT2 and MLCS2k2. Although SALT2 is the most widely used fitter in the SN community, MLCS2k2 has a novelty in the context of an investigation of the luminosity evolution of SNe Ia. For this reason we use both fitters and analyze them separately. We also determine a stellar mass and a star formation rate (SFR) for a sample of ~600 host galaxies. In addition, because recent low-redshift studies suggest that this dependence manifests itself most strongly when using the local SFR at the SN location, we introduce a new method to infer the local environments by restricting the SN Ia sample in globally star-forming host galaxies to a low-mass host galaxy subset (${\leq}10^{10}M_{\odot}$). We find that SNe Ia in low-mass and star-forming host galaxies are fainter than those in high-mass and passive hosts, after light-curve corrections. Especially, for the first time in host studies, we show that SNe Ia in locally star-forming environments are $0.081{\pm}0.018$ mag fainter ($4.5{\sigma}$) than those in locally passive environments from the sample including SNe at the high-redshift range. Considering the significant difference in the mean stellar population age between these environments, the result would suggest that the origin of the environmental dependence is the luminosity evolution of SNe Ia.

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