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Type Ia supernovae (SNe) serve as a fundamental pillar of modern cosmology,owing to their large luminosity and a well-defined relationship betweenlight-curve shape and peak brightness. The precision distance measurementsenabled by SNe Ia first revealed the accelerating expansion of the universe,now widely believed (though hardly understood) to require the presence of amysterious "dark" energy. General consensus holds that Type Ia SNe result fromthermonuclear explosions of a white dwarf (WD) in a binary system; however,little is known of the precise nature of the companion star and the physicalproperties of the progenitor system. Here we make use of extensive historicalimaging obtained at the location of SN 2011fe/PTF11kly, the closest SN Iadiscovered in the digital imaging era, to constrain the visible-lightluminosity of the progenitor to be 10-100 times fainter than previous limits onother SN Ia progenitors. This directly rules out luminous red giants and thevast majority of helium stars as the mass-donating companion to the explodingwhite dwarf. Any evolved red companion must have been born with mass less than3.5 times the mass of the Sun. These observations favour a scenario where theexploding WD of SN 2011fe/PTF11kly, accreted matter either from another WD, orby Roche-lobe overflow from a subgiant or main-sequence companion star.

Constraints on the Progenitor System of the Type Ia Supernova SN 2011fe/PTF11kly