An Ordinary Short Gamma-Ray Burst with Extraordinary Implications: Fermi-GBM Detection of GRB 170817A

By A. Goldstein, P. Veres, E. Burns, M. Briggs, R. Hamburg, D. Kocevski, C. Wilson-Hodge, R. Preece, S. Poolakkil, O. Roberts and 20 more. 2017

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On 2017 August 17 at 12:41:06 UTC the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) detected and triggered on the short gamma-ray burst (GRB) 170817A. Approximately 1.7 s prior to this GRB, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory triggered on a binary compact merger candidate associated with the GRB. This is the first unambiguous coincident observation of gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation from a single astrophysical source and marks the start of gravitational-wave multi-messenger astronomy. We report the GBM observations and analysis of this ordinary short GRB, which extraordinarily confirms that at least some short GRBs are produced by binary compact mergers.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/454271d48458fa08ef183bdb9786cb6eb1fec2fe

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Citations in the corpus

INTEGRAL Detection of the First Prompt Gamma-Ray Signal Coincident with the Gravitational-wave Event GW170817 (2017, methodology): “GRB 170817A, on the other hand, was very soft, with most of its energy below ∼100 keV, apart from a short–hard initial pulse emitting at least up to 200 keV (Goldstein et al. 2017).”
Nonlocal gravity. Conceptual aspects and cosmological predictions (2017, background): “The recent observation by the LIGO and Virgo interferometers of the GWs from the neutron star binary coalescence GW170817 [140] and of the associated γ-ray burst GRB 170817A by Fermi-GBM [141] and INTEGRAL [142] provides a test of the speed cgw of gravitational waves”
The Fourth Fermi-GBM Gamma-Ray Burst Catalog: A Decade of Data (2020, background): “…has assumed greater importance following the first coincident detection of gravitational waves (GW) and electromagnetic (EM) radiation from the same event, namely the binary neutron star merger event detected by Fermi -GBM and LIGO on 2017 August 17 (Abbott et al. 2017b; Goldstein et al. 2017).”
Gravitational wave decay into dark energy (2018, background): “The observation of the gravitational wave event GW170817 [1] and its electromagnetic counterpart [2] started the detailed study of the propagation of gravitational waves (GWs).”
The progenitors of compact-object binaries: impact of metallicity, common envelope and natal kicks (2018, background): “GW170817 was accompanied by electromagnetic radiation over a large range of wavelengths, from radio to gamma-rays (Abbott et al. 2017e; Goldstein et al. 2017; Savchenko et al. 2017; Margutti et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Chornock et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al.…”
The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. VII. Properties of the Host Galaxy and Constraints on the Merger Timescale (2017, background): “A short burst of gamma-rays (GRB 170817) was independently discovered from the same sky location with a delay of about 2 s by Fermi-GBM (Goldstein et al. 2017) and INTEGRAL (Savchenko et al. 2017).”
The outflow structure of GW170817 from late-time broad-band observations (2018, background): “The discovery of GW170817 and its electromagnetic counterparts (GRB170817A and AT2017gfo; Goldstein et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Abbott et al. 2017) ushered in a new era of multi-messenger astrophysics, in which both gravitational waves and photons provide complementary views of the same source”