The Absolute Magnitudes of 1991T-like Supernovae *

Phillips, M. M.; Ashall, C.; Burns, Christopher R.; Contreras, Carlos; Galbany, L.; Hoeflich, P.; Hsiao, E. Y.; Morrell, Nidia; Nugent, Peter; Uddin, Syed A.; Baron, E.; Freedman, Wendy L.; Harris, Chelsea E.; Krisciunas, Kevin; Kumar, S.; Lu, J.; Persson, S. E.; Piro, Anthony L.; Polin, Abigail; Shahbandeh, M.; Stritzinger, Maximilian; Suntzeff, Nicholas B.
2022
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
DOI
10.3847/1538-4357/ac9305
1991T-like supernovae are the luminous, slow-declining extreme of the Branch shallow-silicon (SS) subclass of Type Ia supernovae. They are distinguished by extremely weak Ca ii H & K and Si ii lambda 6355 and strong Fe iii absorption features in their optical spectra at pre-maximum phases, and have long been suspected to be over-luminous compared to normal Type Ia supernovae. In this paper, the pseudo-equivalent width of the Si ii lambda 6355 absorption obtained at light curve phases from <= +10 days is combined with the morphology of the i-band light curve to identify a sample of 1991T-like supernovae in the Carnegie Supernova Project II. Hubble diagram residuals show that, at optical as well as near-infrared wavelengths, these events are over-luminous by similar to 0.1-0.5 mag with respect to the less extreme Branch SS (1999aa-like) and Branch core-normal supernovae with similar B-band light-curve decline rates.