Spectroscopy of Early-Type Host Galaxies of Type Ia Supernovae

The presence of dark energy, suggested from Type Ia supernovae (SNe) cosmology, is the most pronounced astronomical discovery made during the past decade. The basic assumption of this discovery is that the look-back time evolution of SNe luminosity would be negligible after light-curve correction. Several recent works, however, show that there are some differences in Hubble residual among host galaxies having different morphology and mass, indicating that SNe luminosity might be affected by population age. In order to investigate this more directly, we are continuing the YONSEI (YOnsei Nearby Supernovae Evolution Investigation) project, where we are obtaining low-resolution spectra of some 60 nearby early-type host galaxies. The early-type galaxies are preferred because the mean population ages and metallicities can be estimated from the absorption lines, and they are less affected by dust extinction. In this talk, we will report our progress in determining the ages and metallicities of host galaxies to investigate their correlation with the Hubble residual.