Evidence for the Luminosity Evolution of Type Ia Supernovae from the Ages of Early-type Host Galaxies

Supernovae type Ia (SNe Ia) cosmology is providing the only direct evidence for the presence of dark energy. This result is based on the assumption that the look-back time evolution of SNe Ia luminosity, after light-curve shape correction, would be negligible. However, the most recent compilation of SNe Ia data shows systematic difference in the Hubble residual (HR) between the E and Sd/Irr galaxies, indicating that the light-curve fitters used by the SNe Ia community cannot quite correct for a large portion of the population age effect. In order to investigate this possibility more directly, we have obtained low-resolution spectra for 30 nearby early-type host galaxies. This data set is used to estimate the luminosity-weighted mean ages and metallicities of host galaxies by employing the population synthesis models. We found an interesting trend between the host galaxy age and HR, in the sense that younger galaxies have positive residuals (i.e., light-curve corrected SNe Ia luminosity is fainter). This result is rather independent of the choice of the population synthesis models employed. Taken at face value, this age (evolution) effect can mimic a large fraction of the HR used in the discovery of the dark energy. This result is significant at 1.4 - 3 sigma levels, depending on the light curve fitters adopted, and further observations and analyses are certainly required to confirm the trend reported here.