SN 2011fe: A Laboratory for Testing Models of Type Ia Supernovae
  SN 2011fe is the nearest supernova of Type Ia (SN Ia) discovered in the
modern multi-wavelength telescope era, and it also represents the earliest
discovery of a SN Ia to date. As a normal SN Ia, SN 2011fe provides an
excellent opportunity to decipher long-standing puzzles about the nature of SNe
Ia. In this review, we summarize the extensive suite of panchromatic data on SN
2011fe, and gather interpretations of these data to answer four key questions:
1) What explodes in a SN Ia? 2) How does it explode? 3) What is the progenitor
of SN 2011fe? and 4) How accurate are SNe Ia as standardizeable candles? Most
aspects of SN 2011fe are consistent with the canonical picture of a massive CO
white dwarf undergoing a deflagration-to-detonation transition. However, there
is minimal evidence for a non-degenerate companion star, so SN 2011fe may have
marked the merger of two white dwarfs.
