Towards an understanding of Type Ia supernovae from a synthesis of theory and observations

Understand

Motivated by the fact that calibrated light curves of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) have become a major tool to determine the expansion history of the Universe, considerable attention has been given to, both, observations and models of these events over the past 15 years.

• Here, we summarize new observational constraints, address recent progress in modeling Type Ia supernovae by means of three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations, and discuss several of the still open questions.
• It will be be shown that the new models have considerable predictive power which allows us to study observable properties such as light curves and spectra without adjustable non-physical parameters.
• This is a necessary requisite to improve our understanding of the explosion mechanism and to settle the question of the applicability of SNe Ia as distance indicators for cosmology.