Low-Metallicity Inhibition of Type Ia Supernovae and Galactic and Cosmic Chemical Evolution

We introduce a metallicity dependence of Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) rate into the Galactic and cosmic chemical evolution models. In our SN Ia progenitor scenario, the accreting white dwarf (WD) blows a strong wind to reach the Chandrasekhar mass limit. If the iron abundance of the progenitors is as low as Fe/H 1-2, SNe Ia can be found only in the environments where the timescale of metal enrichment is sufficiently short as in starburst galaxies and ellipticals. The low-metallicity inhibition of SNe Ia can shed new light on the following issues: 1) The limited metallicity range of the SN Ia progenitors would imply that ``evolution effects'' are relatively small for the use of high redshift SNe Ia to determine the cosmological parameters. 2) WDs of halo populations are poor producers of SNe Ia, so that the WD contribution to the halo mass is not constrained from the iron abundance in the halo. 3) The abundance patterns of globular clusters and field stars in the Galactic halo lack of SN Ia signatures in spite of their age difference of several Gyrs, which can be explained by the low-metallicity inhibition of SNe Ia. 4) It could also explain why the SN Ia contamination is not seen in the damped Ly\ systems for over a wide range of redshift.