The local ultraviolet signature of Type Ia supernova environments from HST and MUSE
The local environment of a Type Ia supernova (SN~Ia) traces the local stellar-population age (a statistical proxy for the progenitor age), star formation, dust, and chemical enrichment that may influence both its light-curve properties and its standardized luminosity. We assemble a homogeneous explosion-site dataset to test how near-ultraviolet (UV) imaging combined with optical integral-field spectroscopy improves the characterization of SN~Ia environments and their connection to SN~Ia observables. We analyze 340 low-redshift SN~Ia explosion sites observed with HST/WFC3 in F275W together with matched VLT/MUSE spectroscopy. For each site we measure local photometry and extract a 1~kpc-aperture spectrum, model the stellar continuum with STARLIGHT in a joint UV+optical fit, derive local stellar and gas-phase properties, and fit the SN light curves with sncosmo/SALT3-NIR. UV emission is detected at 235 of the 337 sites with valid HST imaging. The UV- and H$\alpha$-based star-formation-rate surface densities are strongly correlated, with the UV estimates systematically higher by about 0.5 dex. Including the UV constraint in the STARLIGHT fit shifts local luminosity-weighted ages toward older values by a median of $+0.20$ dex for UV detections and $+0.45$ dex for UV non-detections, showing that UV data help break age--dust--metallicity degeneracies and substantially alter and tighten the inferred local stellar-population ages within the adopted modelling framework. Consistently, F275W$-r$ is very strongly correlated with the joint-fit stellar age. Within the 169-SN~Ia calibration sample, the joint stellar age, the H$\alpha$ specific star-formation rate (sSFR), and the UV sSFR all correlate strongly with the SALT3 stretch parameter $x_1$, with significances above $6.8\sigma$. (abridged)