Dr. Peter Hoeflich
FSU

University of Florida Astronomy Colloquium - Apr. 2nd, 2008

3-D Signatures of Thermonuclear Supernovae and Cosmology

One of the most stunning discoveries of the last decade was the realization that the Universe is undergoing an accelerated expansion and that a new form of energy that comprises 70% of the energy budget of the Universe. The light beacons of choice are thermodynamical Supernovae, exploding white dwarfs, that permeate the universe and are sufficiently bright to outshine a whole galaxy, and they appear to be a rather homogeneous class of objects. The discovery of dark energy has triggered a new quest for the enigmatic nature of dark energy, which may be probed by measuring how it evolves with time. To use SNe, current limits to the accuracy in supernovae based methods need to be improved by order of magnitude posing a new class of challenges and requiring a better understanding of the 'intrinsically 3 dimensional nature' of these objects. In this talk, I want to discuss the status of our efforts to identify signatures which, potentially, will provide a better understanding of SN explosions aimed to improve SNeIa as tools in cosmology.