Related papers: Heavy element nucleosynthesis associated with a ga…
Ejected material from neutron star mergers give rise to electromagnetic emission powered by radioactive decays of r-process nuclei, which is so called kilonova or macronova. While properties of the emission are largely affected by opacities…
Kilonovae are ultraviolet, optical, and infrared transients powered by the radioactive decay of heavy elements following a neutron star merger. Joint observations of kilonovae and gravitational waves can offer key constraints on the source…
Coalescence of neutron stars gives rise to kilonova, thermal emission powered by radioactive decays of freshly synthesized r-process nuclei. Although observational properties are largely affected by bound-bound opacities of r-process…
The mergers of double neutron star (NS-NS) and black hole (BH)-NS binaries are promising gravitational wave (GW) sources for Advanced LIGO and future GW detectors. The neutron-rich ejecta from such merger events undergoes rapid neutron…
The second brightest gamma-ray burst, GRB 230307A (with a duration $T_{90}$ ~ 40 s), exhibited characteristics indicative of a magnetar engine during the prompt emission phase. Notably, a suspected kilonova was identified in its follow-up…
A kilonova, the electromagnetic emission produced by compact binary mergers, is formed through a delicate interplay of physical processes, involving r-process nucleosynthesis and interactions between heavy elements and photons through…
Here, we report the discovery of a kilonova associated with the nearby (350 Mpc) minute-duration GRB 211211A. In tandem with deep optical limits that rule out the presence of an accompanying supernova to $M_I > -13$ mag at 17.7 days…
Merging neutron stars produce "kilonovae"---electromagnetic transients powered by the decay of unstable nuclei synthesized via rapid neutron capture (the r-process) in material that is gravitationally unbound during inspiral and…
For on-axis typical short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs), the forward shock emission is usually so bright that renders the identification of kilonovae (also known as macronovae) in the early afterglow ($t<0.5$ d) phase rather challenging. This is…
The discovery of the radioactively powered kilonova AT2017gfo, associated with the short-duration gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A and the gravitational wave source GW170817, has provided the first direct evidence supporting binary neutron star…
The rapid neutron capture or 'r process' of nucleosynthesis is believed to be responsible for the production of approximately half the natural abundance of heavy elements found on the periodic table above iron (with proton number $Z=26$)…
The observed spectra and light curves of the kilonova produced by the GW170817 binary neutron star merger provide complementary insights, but modeling both the spectral- and time-domain has proven challenging. Here, we model the…
We present ground-based optical and Hubble Space Telescope optical and near-IR observations of the short-hard GRB130603B at z=0.356, which demonstrate the presence of excess near-IR emission matching the expected brightness and color of an…
The origin of heavy r-process elements in the universe is still a matter of great debate, with a confirmed scenario being neutron star (NS) mergers. Additional relevant sites could be specific classes of events, such as gamma-ray burst…
The neutron star merger is a promising site of heavy element production. By producing heavy elements, the neutron star merger gives rise to a thermal transient called a kilonova. Studying kilonova spectra enables us to quantify the heavy…
We investigate $r$-process nucleosynthesis and kilonova emission resulting from binary neutron star (BNS) mergers based on a three-dimensional (3D) general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulation of a hypermassive neutron star…
Identifying the astrophysical sites of the $r$-process, one of the primary mechanisms by which heavy elements are formed, is a key goal of modern astrophysics. The discovery of the brightest gamma-ray burst of all time, GRB 221009A, at a…
One of the most promising electromagnetic signatures of compact object mergers are kilonovae: approximately isotropic radioactively-powered transients that peak days to weeks post-merger. Key uncertainties in modeling kilonovae include the…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful explosions in the Universe; their energy release reache s us from the end of the re-ionization era, making them invaluable cosmological probes. GRB 230307A i s the second-brightest GRB ever…
Short-duration gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) are intense flashes of cosmic gamma-rays, lasting less than ~2 s, whose origin is one of the great unsolved questions of astrophysics today. While the favoured hypothesis for their production, a…