Electromagnetic Signatures of Neutron Star Mergers in the Advanced LIGO Era

By R. Fern'andez, B. Metzger. 2015

166 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The mergers of binaries containing neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes are the most promising sources for direct detection in gravitational waves by the interferometers Advanced LIGO and Virgo over the next few years. The concurrent detection of electromagnetic emission from these events would greatly enhance the scientific return of these discoveries. Here we review the state of the art in modeling the electromagnetic signal of neutron star binary mergers across different phases of the merger and multiple wavelengths. We focus on those observables which provide the most sensitive diagnostics of the merger physics and the contribution to the synthesis of rapid neutron capture ($r$-process) elements in the Galaxy. We also outline expected future developments on the observational and theoretical sides of this rapidly evolving field.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/38e4a65a615527ba39cae7d1fe5a95f517883da8

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Citations in the corpus

Signatures of hypermassive neutron star lifetimes on r-process nucleosynthesis in the disc ejecta from neutron star mergers (2017, background): “The amount of mass ejected by the disk on the longer timescale can be comparable to that in the dynamical ejecta (e.g., Fernández & Metzger 2016), while the neutrino-driven component is significant only when a hypermassive neutron star (HMNS) phase precedes black hole (BH) formation (Dessart et…”
Long-term GRMHD simulations of neutron star merger accretion discs: implications for electromagnetic counterparts (2018, background): “The remnant accretion disk evolves on longer timescales (∼ 100 ms - 10 s) and ejects mass through a combination of physical processes (see, e.g., Fernández & Metzger 2016 for an overview).”
Constraining the Neutron Star Mass–Radius Relation and Dense Matter Equation of State with NICER. I. The Millisecond Pulsar X-Ray Data Set (2019, background): “…are highly sensitive to the interior structure of NSs (Shibata & Taniguchi 2011; Faber & Rasio 2012; Del Pozzo et al. 2013; Read et al. 2013; Lackey et al. 2014; Kumar & Zhang 2015; Rosswog 2015; Bauswein et al. 2016; Fernández & Metzger 2016; Janka et al. 2016; Oertel et al. 2017; Shibata 2016).”
The Emergence of a Lanthanide-rich Kilonova Following the Merger of Two Neutron Stars (2017, background): “Thus, they are generally considered to provide the best prospects for electromagnetic (EM) counterparts to GW detections (e.g., Metzger & Berger 2012; Kelley et al. 2013; Fernandez & Metzger 2016; Rosswog et al. 2017).”
Kilonova from post-merger ejecta as an optical and near-infrared counterpart of GW170817 (2017, methodology): “This emission is called “kilonova” or “macronova” (see Fernández & Metzger 2016; Tanaka 2016; Metzger 2017, for reviews).”
Production of the entire range of r-process nuclides by black hole accretion disc outflows from neutron star mergers (2016, background): “…outflows on time-scales much longer than the orbital time (e.g., Metzger et al. 2008; Lee et al. 2009; Metzger et al. 2009), and with a contribution to the total mass ejection that can be comparable to, or even larger than that from the dynamical ejecta (Fig/ 1, see also Fernández & Metzger 2016).”
Constraining the Maximum Mass of Neutron Stars from Multi-messenger Observations of GW170817 (2017, background): “Kilonova (Non-Relativistic Ejecta) Two sources of neutron-rich ejecta, capable of synthesizing r-process nuclei, accompany a BNS merger (Fernández & Metzger 2016).”
INTEGRAL Detection of the First Prompt Gamma-Ray Signal Coincident with the Gravitational-wave Event GW170817 (2017, background): “…are expected to be associated with BNS merger events, owing to expanding ejecta, the most obvious of which is an sGRB in temporal coincidence with the GW signal and/or afterglow emission at different wavelengths in the days and/or weeks after the merger event (e.g., Fernández & Metzger 2016).”
Three-dimensional GRMHD Simulations of Neutrino-cooled Accretion Disks from Neutron Star Mergers (2017, background): “Theoretical work has identified several processes that are expected to contribute to mass ejection in NS– NS/NS–BH mergers (e.g. Fernández & Metzger 2016, for a review).”
The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. IV. Detection of Near-infrared Signatures of r-process Nucleosynthesis with Gemini-South (2017, methodology): “Matching the derived Galactic r-process production rate requires kilonova ejecta masses in the range of 0.01–0.1Me (e.g., Fernández & Metzger 2016), if estimates of the binary neutron star merger rate from the Galactic neutron star population are correct (Kalogera et al. 2004; Kim et al. 2015).”
Origin of the heaviest elements: The rapid neutron-capture process (2019, background): “the use of α-viscosity prescriptions to parametrize dissipation (Fernández and Metzger, 2013; Metzger and Fernández, 2014; Just et al., 2015a; Fernández et al., 2015; Fernández and Metzger, 2016; Just et al., 2016; Wu et al., 2016; Wojczuk and Janiuk, 2018; Fujibayashi et al., 2018) to three-dimensi”
A Magnetar Origin for the Kilonova Ejecta in GW170817 (2018, background): “…2013; Tanaka & Hotokezaka 2013; Grossman et al. 2014; Martin et al. 2015; Fontes et al. 2017; Wollaeger et al. 2017; Tanaka et al. 2018; also see Fernández & Metzger 2016; Metzger 2017 for reviews), a conclusion reached independently by several groups (e.g., Drout et al. 2017; Kasen et al.…”