The X-ray counterpart to the gravitational-wave event GW170817
By E. Troja, L. Piro, H. V. Eerten, R. Wollaeger, M. Im, O. Fox, N. Butler, S. Cenko, T. Sakamoto, Chris L. Fryer and 24 more. Nature, 2017
660 citations recorded by the source corpus.
A long-standing paradigm in astrophysics is that collisions—or mergers—of two neutron stars form highly relativistic and collimated outflows (jets) that power γ-ray bursts of short (less than two seconds) duration. The observational support for this model, however, is only indirect. A hitherto outstanding prediction is that gravitational-wave events from such mergers should be associated with γ-ray bursts, and that a majority of these bursts should be seen off-axis, that is, they should point away from Earth. Here we report the discovery observations of the X-ray counterpart associated with the gravitational-wave event GW170817. Although the electromagnetic counterpart at optical and infrared frequencies is dominated by the radioactive glow (known as a ‘kilonova’) from freshly synthesized rapid neutron capture (r-process) material in the merger ejecta, observations at X-ray and, later, radio frequencies are consistent with a short γ-ray burst viewed off-axis. Our detection of X-ray emission at a location coincident with the kilonova transient provides the missing observational link between short γ-ray bursts and gravitational waves from neutron-star mergers, and gives independent confirmation of the collimated nature of the γ-ray-burst emission.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1718edeb9dec188ba374a059a03c13bd8e06359b
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- Science case for the Einstein telescope (2019, background): “Nine and sixteen days after the GW observation of the merger, X-ray and radio emissions were also detected [8, 9].”
- The Binary Neutron Star Event LIGO/Virgo GW170817 160 Days after Merger: Synchrotron Emission across the Electromagnetic Spectrum (2018, methodology): “Further CXO observations obtained at δt ≈ 9d (Troja et al. 2017b, observation ID 19294; PI: Troja; Program 18500489) and δt ≈ 15d (Haggard et al. 2017; Margutti et al. 2017a; Troja et al. 2017b, observation IDs 18988, 20728; PIs: Haggard, Troja; Programs 18400410,18508587) since merger revealed…”
- Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows in the Multimessenger Era: Numerical Models and Closure Relations (2019, methodology): “Unlike typical afterglows, which begin bright and decay from detection with a timescale of a week, GRB 170817Aʼs nonthermal emission was undetectable until the first observation of X-rays nine days after the GRB (Troja et al. 2017).”
- The Discovery of the Electromagnetic Counterpart of GW170817: Kilonova AT 2017gfo/DLT17ck (2017, background): “Deep X-ray follow-up observations conducted with the Chandra observatory revealed X-ray emission from a point source at a position consistent with that of the optical transient DLT17ck (Bartos et al. 2017b; Fong et al. 2017; Troja et al. 2017).”
- A Decline in the X-Ray through Radio Emission from GW170817 Continues to Support an Off-axis Structured Jet (2018, background): “…for the production of relativistic ejecta in such a system (Alexander et al. 2017; Granot et al. 2017; Haggard et al. 2017; Hallinan et al. 2017; Kasliwal et al. 2017; Margutti et al. 2017, 2018; Murguia-Berthier et al. 2017; Troja et al. 2017; Kathirgamaraju et al. 2018; Mooley et al. 2018b).”
- The outflow structure of GW170817 from late-time broad-band observations (2018, background): “Early X-ray and radio observations already rule out (Troja et al. 2017) the universal jet structure (i.e. a power-law drop in energy at larger angles), and we will not discuss this option further here.”