  Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) play an important role in diverse areas of
astrophysics, from the chemical evolution of galaxies to observational
cosmology. However, the nature of the progenitors of SNe Ia is still unclear.
In this paper, according to a detailed binary population synthesis study, we
obtained SN Ia birthrates and delay times from different progenitor models, and
compared them with observations. We find that the Galactic SN Ia birthrate from
the double-degenerate (DD) model is close to those inferred from observations,
while the birthrate from the single-degenerate (SD) model accounts for only
about 1/2-2/3 of the observations. If a single starburst is assumed, the
distribution of the delay times of SNe Ia from the SD model is a weak
bimodality, where the WD + He channel contributes to the SNe Ia with delay
times shorter than 100Myr, and the WD + MS and WD + RG channels to those with
age longer than 1Gyr.
