Type Ia Supernovae: Their Origin and Possible Applications in Cosmology
Ken'ichi Nomoto,
*
Koichi Iwamoto,
Nobuhiro Kishimoto
Spectroscopic and photometric evidence indicates that Type Ia
supernovae (SNe Ia) are the thermonuclear explosions of accreting white
dwarfs. However, the progenitor binary systems and hydrodynamical models for SNe Ia are still controversial. The relatively uniform light
curves and spectral evolution of SNe Ia have led to their use as a
standard candle for determining cosmological parameters, such as the
Hubble constant, the density parameter, and the cosmological constant.
Recent progress includes the calibration of the absolute maximum
brightness of SNe Ia with the Hubble Space Telescope, the reduction of
the dispersion in the Hubble diagram through the use of the relation
between the light curve shape and the maximum brightness of SNe Ia, and
the discovery of many SNe Ia with high red shifts.
The authors are in the Department of Astronomy, University of
Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed.
