Making the Standard Candle: A study of how the progenitor white dwarf modulates the peak luminosity of type Ia supernovae

The goals of the proposed research as stated in the proposal were to: • Build a suite of one-dimensional initial models of different metallicities and central densities. • Using the improved flame capturing scheme, simulate the explosion of a white dwarf with embedded Lagrangian tracer particles, and post-process the thermal histories of the tracers to reconstruct the nucleosynthesis of the explosion. • Survey the effects of a changing progenitor metallicity on the isotopic yields. Of particular interest is 1) whether the linear relation between the mass of 56Ni synthesized and the pro- genitor metallicity is moderated by the effect of electron captures in the core; and 2) how a varying central density alters the relation between metallicity and 56Ni mass. • Using these results, examine how the observed metallicity distribution would affect the brightness distribution of SNe Ia and the isotopic ratios about the Fe-peak