On the relationship between Type Ia supernova luminosity and host-galaxy properties

A string of recent studies have debated the possible presence of an evolutionary trend between the peak luminosity attained by Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) and the properties of the galaxies that host them. We shed new light on the discussion by presenting an analysis of ~200 low-redshift SNe Ia in which we measure the separation of Hubble residuals (HR; as probes of luminosity) between two host-galaxy morphological types (as a probe of both age and mass). We show that this separation can test the predictions made by recently proposed models, using an independently and empirically determined distribution of each morphological type in host-property space. Our results are consistent with the previously known HR-mass step (or slope), but inconsistent with newly proposed HR-age slopes, which we find to significantly overstate what amounts only to a slight trend. In addition, we show that these two trends -- HR-mass and HR-age correlation -- need to be consistent with each other, given the significant correlation that we identify between age and mass in a sample of galaxies. While our result clearly rejects the recently proposed large HR-age slope, the correlations between mass, age, morphology, and HR values are evident, keeping the HR-age slope relevant as an interesting topic for discussion. Our results encourage further studies to determine the physical origin of this relation between host environments and luminosity of SNe~Ia.