Gravitational waves have been detected from a binary neutron star merger event, GW170817. The detection of electromagnetic radiation from the same source has shown that the merger occurred in the outskirts of the galaxy NGC 4993, at a distance of 40 megaparsecs from Earth. We report the detection of a counterpart radio source that appears 16 days after the event, allowing us to diagnose the energetics and environment of the merger. The observed radio emission can be explained by either a collimated ultra-relativistic jet viewed off-axis, or a cocoon of mildly relativistic ejecta. Within 100 days of the merger, the radio light curves will distinguish between these models and very long baseline interferometry will have the capability to directly measure the angular velocity and geometry of the debris.
@article{arxiv.1710.05435,
title = {A Radio Counterpart to a Neutron Star Merger},
author = {G. Hallinan and A. Corsi and K. P. Mooley and K. Hotokezaka and E. Nakar and M. M. Kasliwal and D. L. Kaplan and D. A. Frail and S. T. Myers and T. Murphy and K. De and D. Dobie and J. R. Allison and K. W. Bannister and V. Bhalerao and P. Chandra and T. E. Clarke and S. Giacintucci and A. Y. Q. Ho and A. Horesh and N. E. Kassim and S. R. Kulkarni and E. Lenc and F. J. Lockman and C. Lynch and D. Nichols and S. Nissanke and N. Palliyaguru and W. M. Peters and T. Piran and J. Rana and E. M. Sadler and L. P. Singer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.05435},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
Science, in press, 26 pages, DOI:10.1126/science.aap9855