Twin Supernova Studies with SNe Ia from SNfactory
Résumé
We present a study of twin supernovae with spectrophotometric timeseries of nearby Type Ia supernova from the Nearby Supernova Factory (Aldering, et al. 2002). One advantage of "twins" is they offer the best opportunity for having objects with the same intrinsic luminosities and colors, ostensibly leaving only extrinsic factors such as dust to explain any observed differences in brightness and color. Using well-sampled timeseries data for over 100 nearby Hubble-flow SNe Ia, we study the impact of dust on the brightness differences of SN Ia twins in order to improve the standardization of these standardizable candles that have been and will continue to be a primary tool in the determination of cosmological parameters. Specifically we are able to solve for the relative extinction and RV needed to bring the twins into near-perfect agreement. We will present a study of the resulting distribution of RV. In searching for twin supernovae we have found groups of SNe, again differing only by a dust law that accounts for the brightness differences. These groups allow us to look for similarities in subsets of SNe and explore spectrophotometric differences from group to group.