Lightcurves of thermonuclear supernovae as a probe of the explosion mechanism and their use in cosmology

Abstract

Thermonuclear supernovae are valuable for cosmology but their physics is not yet fully understood. Modeling the development and propagation of nuclear flame is complicated by numerous instabilities. The predictions of supernova light curves still involve some simplifying assumptions, but one can use the comparison of the computed fluxes with observations to constrain the explosion mechanism. In spite of great progress in recent years, a number of issues remains unsolved both in flame physics and light curve modeling.