2015ApJ...809...32D

Supernovae of type Ia (SNe Ia) can be produced by the explosion of slowly rotating carbon-oxygen white dwarfs whose mass increases beyond a critical value by mass accretion. Collision with circumstellar material during their photospheric and early nebular phases can enhance the bolometric luminosity of otherwise ordinary SNe Ia to become superluminous. A few simplifying assumptions lead to a simple analytic master formula, which describes quite well the bolometric light curves of ordinary SNe Ia and supeluminous SNe Ia in terms of a few initial physical parameters. Other main properties of SNe Ia, including the empirical "brighter-slower" Phillips' relation that was used to standardize ordinary SNe Ia as distance indicators and led to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe, are reproduced.