Type Ia supernovae have been used with remarkable success for measuring cosmological distances and lead to the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe. The discovery has dramatically changed our view of Nature and the origin of the acceleration is today one of the most important problems in physics. SNe Ia distances continue to serve as a key observational tool for addressing this issue. However, uncertainties, mainly astrophysical in origin, prevent us to discern between the alternatives for the acceleration: Is it Einstein's Cosmological Constant, or are we witnessing the discovery of a completely new phenomenon? We have ongoing research programs to address these issues with the aim to improve our understanding of the universal composition.
The Stockholm group is active in pursuing several supernova observational programs with data collected in UV, optical and near-IR wavelengths at the Hubble Space Telescope, ESO’s VLT and the NOT at the Canary Islands. Moreover, we have recently joined the iPTF collaboration that scans the sky regularly to discover new near-by SNe, short after explosion. The data can for example be used to study the wavelength dependence of the dimming of light due to dust in the line of sight, which is one of the main limitations of supernova cosmology. Furthermore, we hope to find gravitationally lensed supernovae with our survey of massive galaxy clusters, which may be ideal for spectroscopic studies of supernovae the highest redshifts.
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