English

Fast response electromagnetic follow-ups from low latency GW triggers

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2016-06-22 v1

Abstract

We investigate joint low-latency gravitational wave (GW) detection and prompt electromagnetic (EM) follow-up observations of coalescing binary neutron stars (BNSs). Assuming that BNS mergers are associated with short duration gamma ray bursts (SGRBs), we evaluate if rapid EM follow-ups can capture the prompt emission, early engine activity or reveal any potential by-products such as magnetars or fast radio bursts. To examine the expected performance of extreme low-latency search pipelines, we simulate a population of coalescing BNSs and use these to estimate the detectability and localisation efficiency at different times before merger. Using observational SGRB flux data corrected to the range of the advanced GW interferometric detectors, we determine what EM observations could be achieved from low-frequency radio up to high energy γ\gamma-ray. We show that while challenging, breakthrough multi-messenger science is possible through low latency pipelines.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1603.04120,
  title  = {Fast response electromagnetic follow-ups from low latency GW triggers},
  author = {E. J. Howell and Q. Chu and A. Rowlinson and H. Gao and B. Zhang and S. J. Tingay and M. Boer and L. Wen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.04120},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

For Journal of Physics: Conference Series, accepted 19th Jan 2016