English

Simulating short GRB jets in late binary neutron star merger environments

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2025-04-08 v3

Abstract

The electromagnetic emission and the afterglow observations of the binary neutron star merger event GW 170817A confirmed the association of the merger with a short gamma-ray burst (sGRB) harboring a narrow (55{\deg}-1010{\deg}) and powerful (104910^{49}-1050 10^{50}~erg) jet. Using the 1~second-long neutrino-radiation-GR-MHD simulation of coalescing neutron stars of Kiuchi et al. (2023) and following the semi-analytical estimates of Pais et al. (2023), we inject a narrow, powerful, unmagnetized jet into the post-merger phase. We explore different opening angles, luminosities, central engine durations, and times after the merger. We explore early (0.1 0.1~s following the merger) and late (1 1~s) jet launches; the latter is consistent with the time delay of 1.74 \approx 1.74~s observed between GW 170817 and GRB 170817A. We demonstrate that the semi-analytical estimates correctly predict the jets' breakout and collimation conditions. When comparing our synthetic afterglow light curves to the observed radio data of GW170807, we find a good agreement for a 3×10493 \times 10^{49} ergs jet launched late with an opening angle in the range 5\simeq 5{\deg}-77{\deg}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.19002,
  title  = {Simulating short GRB jets in late binary neutron star merger environments},
  author = {Matteo Pais and Tsvi Piran and Kenta Kiuchi and Masaru Shibata},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.19002},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

25 pages, 17 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication on ApJ, minor corrections

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:55:04.297Z