Study of the double-detonation Type Ia supernova scenario, in which a helium-shell detonation triggers a carbon-core detonation in a sub-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf (WD), has experienced a resurgence in the past decade. New evolutionary scenarios and a better understanding of which nuclear reactions are essential have allowed for successful explosions in WDs with much thinner helium shells than in the original, decades-old incarnation of the double-detonation scenario. In this paper, we present the first suite of light curves and spectra from multidimensional radiative transfer calculations of thin-shell double-detonation models, exploring a range of WD and helium-shell masses. We find broad agreement with the observed light curves and spectra of nonpeculiar Type Ia supernovae, from subluminous to overluminous subtypes, providing evidence that double detonations of sub-Chandrasekhar-mass WDs produce the bulk of observed Type Ia supernovae. Some discrepancies in spectral velocities and colors persist, but these may be brought into agreement by future calculations that include more accurate initial conditions and radiation transport physics.

The creation of "hybrid" white dwarfs, made of a C-O core within an O-Ne shell has been proposed, and studies indicate that ignition in the C-rich central region makes these viable progenitors for thermonuclear (type Ia) supernovae. Recent work found that the C-O core is mixed with the surrounding O-Ne as the white dwarf cools prior to accretion, which results in lower central C fractions in the massive progenitor than previously assumed. To further investigate the efficacy of hybrid white dwarfs as progenitors of thermonuclear supernovae, we performed simulations of thermonuclear supernovae from a new series of hybrid progenitors that include the effects of mixing during cooling. The progenitor white dwarf model was constructed with the one-dimensional stellar evolution code Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) and represented a star evolved through the phase of unstable interior mixing followed by accretion until it reached conditions for the ignition of carbon burning. This MESA model was then mapped to a two-dimensional initial condition for explosions simulated with FLASH. For comparison, similar simulations were performed for a traditional C-O progenitor white dwarf. By comparing the yields of the explosions, we find that, as with earlier studies, the lower C abundance in the hybrid progenitor compared to the traditional C-O progenitor leads to a lower average yield of 56Ni. Although the unmixed hybrid white dwarf showed a similar decrement also in total iron-group yield, the mixed case does not and produces a smaller fraction of iron-group elements in the form of 56Ni. We attribute this to the higher central density required for ignition and the location, center or off-center, of deflagration ignition.