A Summary of Multimessenger Science with Neutron Star Mergers
Abstract
Neutron star mergers, referring to both binary neutron star and neutron star black hole mergers, are the canonical multimessenger events. They have been detected across the electromagnetic spectrum, have recently been detected in gravitational waves, and are likely to produce neutrinos over several decades in energy. The non-thermal prompt and afterglow emission of short gamma-ray bursts and the quasi-thermal emission from the radioactively powered kilonovae provide distinct insights into the physics of neutron star mergers. When combined with direct information on coalescence from gravitational waves and neutrinos these sources may become the best understood astrophysical transients. Multimessenger observations of these cataclysmic events will determine sources of gravitational waves and astrophysical neutrinos, enable precision cosmology, and unique tests of fundamental physics, the origin of heavy elements, the behavior of relativistic jets, and the equation of state of supranuclear matter. In this white paper we present a summary of the science discoveries possible with multimessenger observations of neutron star mergers and provide recommendations to enable them in the new era of time-domain, multimessenger astronomy.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1903.03582,
title = {A Summary of Multimessenger Science with Neutron Star Mergers},
author = {Eric Burns and Aaron Tohuvavohu and James Buckley and Tito Dal Canton and S. Brad Cenko and John W. Conklin and Filippo D'Ammando and David Eichler and Chris Fryer and Alexander J. van der Horst and Marc Kamionkowski and Mansi Kasliwal and Raffaella Margutti and Brian D. Metzger and Kohta Murase and Samaya Nissanke and David Radice and John Tomsick and Colleen A. Wilson-Hodge and Bing Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.03582},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Astro2020 White Paper