Sebastien Bongard

Type Ia Supernova Spectral Line Ratios as Luminosity Indicators

Type Ia supernovae have played a crucial role in thediscovery of the dark energy, via the measurement of their light curvesand the determination of the peak brightness via fitting templates to theobserved lightcurve shape. Two spectroscopic indicators are also known tobe well correlated with peak luminosity. Since the spectroscopicluminosity indicators are obtained directly from observed spectra, theywill have different systematic errors than do measurements usingphotometry. Additionally, these spectroscopic indicators may be usefulfor studies of effects of evolution or age of the SNe~;Ia progenitorpopulation. We present several new variants of such spectroscopicindicators which are easy to automate and which minimize the effects ofnoise. We show that these spectroscopic indicators can be measured byproposed JDEM missions such as snap and JEDI.

Spectral Modeling of SNe Ia Near Maximum Light: Probing the Characteristics of Hydrodynamical Models

We have performed detailed non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) spectral synthesis modeling of two types of one-dimensional hydrodynamical models: the very highly parameterized deflagration model W7, and two delayed-detonation models. We find that, overall, both models do about equally well at fitting well-observed SNe Ia near maximum light. However, the Si II ?6150 feature of W7 is systematically too fast, whereas for the delayed-detonation models it is also somewhat too fast but significantly better than that of W7. We find that a parameterized mixed model does the best job of reproducing the Si II ?6150 line near maximum light, and we study the differences in the models that lead to better fits to normal SNe Ia. We discuss what is required of a hydrodynamical model to fit the spectra of observed SNe Ia near maximum light.

Multi-layered Spectral Formation in SNe Ia Around Maximum Light

We use the radiative transfer code \phx\ to study the line formation of the wavelength region 5000-7000 Angstrom. This is the region where the SNe Ia defining Si II feature occurs. This region is important since the ratio of the two nearby silicon lines has been shown to correlate with the absolute blue magnitude. We use a grid of LTE synthetic spectral models to investigate the formation of line features in the spectra of SNe Ia. By isolating the main contributors to the spectral formation we show that the ions that drive the spectral ratio are FeIII, FeII, SiII and SII. While the first two strongly dominate the flux transfer, the latter two form in the same physical region inside of the supernova. We also show that the naive blackbody that one would derive from a fit to the observed spectrum is far different than the true underlying continuum.