The nature and role of the binary companion of carbon-oxygen white dwarf stars that explode as Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are not yet fully understood. Past detections of circumstellar material (CSM) that contain hydrogen for a small number of SN Ia progenitor systems suggest that at least some have a nondegenerate companion. In order to constrain the prevalence, location, and quantity of CSM in SN Ia systems, we performed a near-ultraviolet (NUV) survey with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to look for the high-energy signature of SN Ia ejecta interacting with the CSM. Our survey revealed that SN 2015cp, an SN 1991T-like overluminous SN Ia, was experiencing late-onset interaction between its ejecta and the surrounding CSM 664 days after its light-curve peak. We present ground- and space-based follow-up observations of SN 2015cp that reveal optical emission lines of H and Ca, typical signatures of ejecta-CSM interaction. We show how SN 2015cp was likely similar to the well-studied SN Ia-CSM event PTF11kx, making it the second case in which an unambiguously classified SN Ia was observed to interact with a distant shell of CSM that contains hydrogen (R CSM 10 16 cm). The remainder of our HST NUV images of SNe Ia were nondetections that we use to constrain the occurrence rate of observable late-onset CSM interaction. We apply theoretical models for the emission from ejecta-CSM interaction to our NUV nondetections and place upper limits on the mass and radial extent of CSM in SN Ia progenitor systems.

Despite their cosmological utility, the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are still unknown, with many efforts focused on whether accretion from a nondegenerate companion can grow a carbon-oxygen white dwarf to near the Chandrasekhar mass. The association of SNe Ia resembling SN 1991T ("91T-like") with circumstellar interaction may be evidence for this "single-degenerate" channel. However, the observed circumstellar medium (CSM) in these interacting systems is unlike a stellar wind - of particular interest, it is sometimes detached from the stellar surface, residing at ∼1016 cm. A Hubble Space Telescope (HST) program to discover detached CSM around 91T-like SNe Ia successfully discovered interaction nearly two years after explosion in SN 2015cp (Graham et al. 2018). In this work, we present radio and X-ray follow-up observations of SN 2015cp and analyze them in the framework of Harris et al. (2016) to limit the properties of a constant-density CSM shell in this system. Assuming the HST detection took place shortly after the shock crossed the CSM, we constrain the total CSM mass in this system to be <0.5 . This limit is comparable to the CSM mass of supernova PTF11kx, but does not rule out lower masses predicted for recurrent novae. From lessons learned modeling PTF11kx and SN 2015cp, we suggest a strategy for future observations of these events to increase the sample of known interacting SNe Ia.