Program: GN-2013A-Q-68

SNe Ia remain nature's best standardized candles, and yet their progenitors have long been a mystery. However, it is now clear that there is a multiplicity of SN Ia progenitors. Recent findings that SNe Ia correct to different absolute magnitudes in different mass galaxies may be related to differing progenitors, and/or explosion physics. With this proposal we will obtrain early GMOS spectroscopy of SNe a few days after explosion with three main goals: (1) trigger our high resolution spectroscopy time on Keck HIRES and VLT X-Shooter to search for circumstellar material indicative of a single degenerate origin, (2) build the first well-controlled sample studying unburned progenitor carbon in SNe Ia, testing whether this traces white dwarf mergers or explosion physics (3) type SNe as early as possible to enable follow-up observations and studies, including cosmology. Our results depend on early-time observations for which the queue-scheduled Gemini is uniquely suited.