Photometric properties of intermediate-redshift type Ia supernovae observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey

We have analysed multiband light curves of 328 intermediate-redshift (0.05 ≤ z < 0.24) Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey. The multiband light curves were parametrized by using the multiband stretch method, which can simply parametrize light-curve shapes and peak brightness without dust extinction models. We found that most of the SNe Ia that appeared in red host galaxies (u − r > 2.5) do not have a broad light-curve width and the SNe Ia that appeared in blue host galaxies (u − r < 2.0) have a variety of light-curve widths. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test shows that the colour distribution of SNe Ia appearing in red/blue host galaxies is different (a significance level of 99.9 per cent). We also investigate the extinction law of host galaxy dust. As a result, we find that the value of R_v derived from SNe Ia with medium light-curve widths is consistent with the standard Galactic value, whereas the value of R_v derived from SNe Ia that appear in red host galaxies becomes significantly smaller. These results indicate that there may be two types of SNe Ia with different intrinsic colours, and that they are obscured by host galaxy dust with two different properties.