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 1{\sigma}, but is consistent at the 3{\sigma} 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.
