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Spectroscopic Determination of the Low Redshift Type Ia Supernova Rate from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Supernova rates are directly coupled to high mass stellar birth and evolution. As such, they are one of the few direct measures of the history of cosmic stellar evolution. In this paper we describe an probabilistic technique for identifying supernovae within spectroscopic samples of galaxies. We present a study of 52 type Ia supernovae ranging in age from -14 days to +40 days extracted from a parent sample of \simeq 50,000 spectra from the SDSS DR5. We find a Supernova Rate (SNR) of 0.472^{+0.048}_{-0.039}(Systematic)^{+0.081}_{-0.071}(Statistical)SNu at a redshift of <z> = 0.1. This value is higher than other values at low redshift at the 1σ, but is consistent at the 3σ level. The 52 supernova candidates used in this study comprise the third largest sample of supernovae used in a type Ia rate determination to date. In this paper we demonstrate the potential for the described approach for detecting supernovae in future spectroscopic surveys.