Observations of Type Ia Supernovae, and Challenges for Cosmology

Observations of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) reveal correlations between their luminosities and light-curve shapes, and between their spectral sequence and photometric sequence. Assuming SNe Ia do not evolve at different redshifts, the Hubble diagram of SNe Ia may indicate an accelerating Universe, the signature of a cosmological constant or other forms of dark energy. Several studies raise concerns about the evolution of SNe Ia (e.g., the peculiarity rate, the risetime, and the color of SNe Ia at different redshifts), but all these studies suffer from the difficulties of obtaining high-quality spectroscopy and photometry for SNe Ia at high redshifts. There are also some troubling cases of SNe Ia that provide counterexamples to the observed correlations, suggesting that a secondary parameter is necessary to describe the whole SN Ia family. Understanding SNe Ia both observationally and theoretically will be the key to boosting confidence in the SN Ia cosmological results.