Seminar: Cosmology with Type Ia Supernovae: Recent results and future directions

Chris Lidman 

Australian Astronomical Observatory

A Hubble Space Telescope image of the supernova remnant N 63A in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Download the pdf poster.

The last dozen years has seen great progress in our use of Type Ia supernovae (SNe) to measure cosmological parameters: from the discovery of the accelerating Universe in 1998 using a few dozen SNe, to the most recent constraints on the nature of dark energy using over 500 SNe.

Einstein’s cosmological constant, in which the dark energy equation of state parameter is exactly minus one, is consistent with current data, but so are several alternative models, in which the equation of state is not minus one and is varying with time.

Differentiating between these two possibilities is now the most important goal in SN cosmology. In this talk, I will give an overview of how we use SNe to measure cosmological parameters, present some recent results from a survey that searched for SNe in distant galaxy clusters and discuss new work that aims to increase the number of SNe and to reduce some of the largest sources of systematic uncertainty.