An archival search for type Ia supernova siblings

Abstract

ABSTRACT By searching the Open Supernova Catalog, an extragalactic transient host galaxy database, and literature analyses, I present the largest sample of type Ia supernova (SN Ia) siblings to date. The sample comprises 158 galaxies, consisting of 327 confirmed SNe Ia, over 10 times larger than existing sibling SN Ia samples. SN siblings share host galaxies, and thus share global environmental properties and associated systematic uncertainties. This makes them valuable for both cosmological and astrophysical analyses; for example, sibling SNe Ia allow for comparison of environmental properties within the same galaxy, progenitor comparisons, rates analyses, and multiple calibrations of the Hubble–Lemaître constant. This large sample will provide a variety of new avenues of research, and be of great interest to the wider SN Ia community. To give an example use of this sample, I define a cosmology subsample of 44 siblings; and use it to compare light-curve properties between sibling pairs. I find no evidence for correlations in stretch (x1) and colour (c) between pairs of siblings. Moreover, by comparing a comparable set of random pairs of SNe Ia through boot-strapping, I find that siblings are no more similar in x1 and c than any random pair of SNe Ia. Given that siblings share the same hosts, differences in x1 and c between siblings cannot be due to global galaxy properties. This raises important questions regarding environmental systematics for SN Ia standardization in cosmology, and motivates future analyses of sibling SNe Ia.