Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ~1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40+8-8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 Mo. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ~40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One- Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ~10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ~9 and ~16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta

Localization and broadband follow-up of the gravitational-wave transient GW150914

A gravitational-wave (GW) transient was identified in data recorded by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors on 2015 September 14. The event, initially designated G184098 and later given the name GW150914, is described in detail elsewhere. By prior arrangement, preliminary estimates of the time, significance, and sky location of the event were shared with 63 teams of observers covering radio, optical, near-infrared, X-ray, and gamma-ray wavelengths with ground- and space-based facilities. In this Letter we describe the low-latency analysis of the GW data and present the sky localization of the first observed compact binary merger. We summarize the follow-up observations reported by 25 teams via private Gamma-ray Coordinates Network circulars, giving an overview of the participating facilities, the GW sky localization coverage, the timeline, and depth of the observations. As this event turned out to be a binary black hole merger, there is little expectation of a detectable electromagnetic (EM) signature. Nevertheless, this first broadband campaign to search for a counterpart of an Advanced LIGO source represents a milestone and highlights the broad capabilities of the transient astronomy community and the observing strategies that have been developed to pursue neutron star binary merger events. Detailed investigations of the EM data and results of the EM follow-up campaign are being disseminated in papers by the individual teams

Search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 in the second Advanced LIGO observing run with an improved hidden Markov model

We present results from a semicoherent search for continuous gravitational waves from the low-mass x-ray binary Scorpius X-1, using a hidden Markov model (HMM) to track spin wandering. This search improves on previous HMM-based searches of LIGO data by using an improved frequency domain matched filter, the J-statistic, and by analyzing data from Advanced LIGO's second observing run. In the frequency range searched, from 60 to 650 Hz, we find no evidence of gravitational radiation. At 194.6 Hz, the most sensitive search frequency, we report an upper limit on gravitational wave strain (at 95% confidence) of h095%=3.47×10-25 when marginalizing over source inclination angle. This is the most sensitive search for Scorpius X-1, to date, that is specifically designed to be robust in the presence of spin wandering. © 2019 American Physical Society

Search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 in the second Advanced LIGO observing run with an improved hidden Markov model

We present results from a semicoherent search for continuous gravitational waves from the low-mass x-ray binary Scorpius X-1, using a hidden Markov model (HMM) to track spin wandering. This search improves on previous HMM-based searches of LIGO data by using an improved frequency domain matched filter, the J-statistic, and by analyzing data from Advanced LIGO’s second observing run. In the frequency range searched, from 60 to 650 Hz, we find no evidence of gravitational radiation. At 194.6 Hz, the most sensitive search frequency, we report an upper limit on gravitational wave strain (at 95% confidence) of h95%0=3.47×10−25 when marginalizing over source inclination angle. This is the most sensitive search for Scorpius X-1, to date, that is specifically designed to be robust in the presence of spin wandering

Gravitational Waves and Gamma-Rays from a Binary Neutron Star Merger: GW170817 and GRB 170817A

On 2017 August 17, the gravitational-wave event GW170817 was observed by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors, and the gamma-ray burst (GRB) GRB 170817A was observed independently by the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, and the Anti-Coincidence Shield for the Spectrometer for the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory. The probability of the near-simultaneous temporal and spatial observation of GRB 170817A and GW170817 occurring by chance is $5.0\times {10}^{-8}$. We therefore confirm binary neutron star mergers as a progenitor of short GRBs. The association of GW170817 and GRB 170817A provides new insight into fundamental physics and the origin of short GRBs. We use the observed time delay of $(+1.74\pm 0.05)\,{\rm{s}}$ between GRB 170817A and GW170817 to: (i) constrain the difference between the speed of gravity and the speed of light to be between $-3\times {10}^{-15}$ and $+7\times {10}^{-16}$ times the speed of light, (ii) place new bounds on the violation of Lorentz invariance, (iii) present a new test of the equivalence principle by constraining the Shapiro delay between gravitational and electromagnetic radiation. We also use the time delay to constrain the size and bulk Lorentz factor of the region emitting the gamma-rays. GRB 170817A is the closest short GRB with a known distance, but is between 2 and 6 orders of magnitude less energetic than other bursts with measured redshift. A new generation of gamma-ray detectors, and subthreshold searches in existing detectors, will be essential to detect similar short bursts at greater distances. Finally, we predict a joint detection rate for the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor and the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors of 0.1-1.4 per year during the 2018-2019 observing run and 0.3-1.7 per year at design sensitivity

GWTC-2.1: Deep extended catalog of compact binary coalescences observed by LIGO and Virgo during the first half of the third observing run

The second Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog, GWTC-2, reported on 39 compact binary coalescences observed by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors between 1 April 2019 15 ∶ 00 UTC and 1 October 2019 15 ∶ 00 UTC. Here, we present GWTC-2.1, which reports on a deeper list of candidate events observed over the same period. We analyze the final version of the strain data over this period with improved calibration and better subtraction of excess noise, which has been publicly released. We employ three matched-filter search pipelines for candidate identification, and estimate the probability of astrophysical origin for each candidate event. While GWTC-2 used a false alarm rate threshold of 2 per year, we include in GWTC-2.1, 1201 candidates that pass a false alarm rate threshold of 2 per day. We calculate the source properties of a subset of 44 high-significance candidates that have a probability of astrophysical origin greater than 0.5. Of these candidates, 36 have been reported in GWTC-2. We also calculate updated source properties for all binary black hole events previously reported in GWTC-1. If the eight additional high-significance candidates presented here are astrophysical, the mass range of events that are unambiguously identified as binary black holes (both objects ≥ 3 M⊙ ) is increased compared to GWTC-2, with total masses from ∼ 14 M ⊙ for GW190924_021846 to ∼ 182 M⊙ for GW190426_190642. Source properties calculated using our default prior suggest that the primary components of two new candidate events (GW190403_051519 and GW190426_190642) fall in the mass gap predicted by pair-instability supernova theory. We also expand the population of binaries with significantly asymmetric mass ratios reported in GWTC-2 by an additional two events (the mass ratio is less than 0.65 and 0.44 at 90% probability for GW190403_051519 and GW190917_114630 respectively), and find that two of the eight new events have effective inspiral spins χeff > 0 (at 90% credibility), while no binary is consistent with χeff < 0 at the same significance. We provide updated estimates for rates of binary black hole and binary neutron star coalescence in the local Universe

All-sky search for continuous gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars in the early O3 LIGO data

We report on an all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves in the frequency band 20-2000 Hz and with a frequency time derivative in the range of [-1.0,+0.1]×10-8 Hz/s. Such a signal could be produced by a nearby, spinning and slightly nonaxisymmetric isolated neutron star in our Galaxy. This search uses the LIGO data from the first six months of Advanced LIGO's and Advanced Virgo's third observational run, O3. No periodic gravitational wave signals are observed, and 95% confidence-level (C.L.) frequentist upper limits are placed on their strengths. The lowest upper limits on worst-case (linearly polarized) strain amplitude h0 are ∼1.7×10-25 near 200 Hz. For a circularly polarized source (most favorable orientation), the lowest upper limits are ∼6.3×10-26. These strict frequentist upper limits refer to all sky locations and the entire range of frequency derivative values. For a population-averaged ensemble of sky locations and stellar orientations, the lowest 95% C.L. upper limits on the strain amplitude are ∼1.4×10-25. These upper limits improve upon our previously published all-sky results, with the greatest improvement (factor of ∼2) seen at higher frequencies, in part because quantum squeezing has dramatically improved the detector noise level relative to the second observational run, O2. These limits are the most constraining to date over most of the parameter space searched

All-sky, all-frequency directional search for persistent gravitational waves from Advanced LIGO’s and Advanced Virgo’s first three observing runs

We present the first results from an all-sky all-frequency (ASAF) search for an anisotropic stochastic gravitational-wave background using the data from the first three observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. Upper limit maps on broadband anisotropies of a persistent stochastic background were published for all observing runs of the LIGO-Virgo detectors. However, a broadband analysis is likely to miss narrowband signals as the signal-to-noise ratio of a narrowband signal can be significantly reduced when combined with detector output from other frequencies. Data folding and the computationally efficient analysis pipeline, {\tt PyStoch}, enable us to perform the radiometer map-making at every frequency bin. We perform the search at 3072 {\tt{HEALPix}} equal area pixels uniformly tiling the sky and in every frequency bin of width $1/32$~Hz in the range $20-1726$~Hz, except for bins that are likely to contain instrumental artefacts and hence are notched. We do not find any statistically significant evidence for the existence of narrowband gravitational-wave signals in the analyzed frequency bins. Therefore, we place $95\%$ confidence upper limits on the gravitational-wave strain for each pixel-frequency pair, the limits are in the range $(0.030 - 9.6) \times10^{-24}$. In addition, we outline a method to identify candidate pixel-frequency pairs that could be followed up by a more sensitive (and potentially computationally expensive) search, e.g., a matched-filtering-based analysis, to look for fainter nearly monochromatic coherent signals. The ASAF analysis is inherently independent of models describing any spectral or spatial distribution of power. We demonstrate that the ASAF results can be appropriately combined over frequencies and sky directions to successfully recover the broadband directional and isotropic results

Binary Black Hole Mergers in the first Advanced LIGO Observing Run

The first observational run of the Advanced LIGO detectors, from September 12, 2015 to January 19, 2016, saw the first detections of gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers. In this paper we present full results from a search for binary black hole merger signals with total masses up to $100 M_\odot$ and detailed implications from our observations of these systems. Our search, based on general-relativistic models of gravitational wave signals from binary black hole systems, unambiguously identified two signals, GW150914 and GW151226, with a significance of greater than $5\sigma$ over the observing period. It also identified a third possible signal, LVT151012, with substantially lower significance, which has a 87% probability of being of astrophysical origin. We provide detailed estimates of the parameters of the observed systems. Both GW150914 and GW151226 provide an unprecedented opportunity to study the two-body motion of a compact-object binary in the large velocity, highly nonlinear regime. We do not observe any deviations from general relativity, and place improved empirical bounds on several high-order post-Newtonian coefficients. From our observations we infer stellar-mass binary black hole merger rates lying in the range $9-240 \mathrm{Gpc}^{-3} \mathrm{yr}^{-1}$. These observations are beginning to inform astrophysical predictions of binary black hole formation rates, and indicate that future observing runs of the Advanced detector network will yield many more gravitational wave detections