The Combined Ultraviolet, Optical, and Near-infrared Light Curves of the Kilonova Associated with the Binary Neutron Star Merger GW170817: Unified Data Set, Analytic Models, and Physical Implications

By V. Villar, J. Guillochon, E. Berger, B. Metzger, P. Cowperthwaite, M. Nicholl, K. Alexander, P. Blanchard, Ryan Chornock, T. Eftekhari and 3 more. 2017

394 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the first effort to aggregate, homogenize, and uniformly model the combined ultraviolet, optical, and near-infrared data set for the electromagnetic counterpart of the binary neutron star merger GW170817. By assembling all of the available data from 18 different papers and 46 different instruments, we are able to identify and mitigate systematic offsets between individual data sets and to identify clear outlying measurements, with the resulting pruned and adjusted data set offering an opportunity to expand the study of the kilonova. The unified data set includes 647 individual flux measurements, spanning 0.45–29.4 days post-merger, and thus has greater constraining power for physical models than any single data set. We test a number of semi-analytical models and find that the data are well modeled with a three-component kilonova model: a “blue” lanthanide-poor component ( cm2 g−1) with and an intermediate opacity “purple” component ( cm2 g−1) with and and a “red” lanthanide-rich component ( cm2 g−1) with and . We further explore the possibility of ejecta asymmetry and its impact on the estimated parameters. From the inferred parameters we draw conclusions about the physical mechanisms responsible for the various ejecta components, the properties of the neutron stars, and, combined with an up-to-date merger rate, the implications for r-process enrichment via this channel. To facilitate future studies of this keystone event we make the unified data set and our modeling code public.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6b0a9e0a02c56fdd27cc3dd17ea1bf47cf59ae39

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Metzger
2. E. Berger
3. Bing Zhang
4. E. Quataert
5. D. Kasen
6. T. Thompson
7. Luke F. Roberts
8. W. Fong

Citations in the corpus

• GW170817: Joint Constraint on the Neutron Star Equation of State from Multimessenger Observations (2017, neutral): “02 , component of the outflow (Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Perego et al. 2017; Villar et al. 2017).”
• The evolution of the X-ray afterglow emission of GW 170817 / GRB 170817A in XMM-Newton observations (2018, background): “…Li & Paczyński 1998), providing the first compelling observational evidence for the existence of such elusive transient sources (Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Evans et al. 2017; Kasliwal et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Pian et al. 2017; Smartt et al. 2017; Villar et al. 2017).”
• Three-dimensional GRMHD Simulations of Neutrino-cooled Accretion Disks from Neutron Star Mergers (2017, methodology): “We note that v̄∞ of the unbound outflow corresponds to the kinetic energy-averaged value vKN ≈ 0.1c, similar to that required to explain the red KN component observed in the recent GW170817 event (e.g. Chornock et al. 2017; Villar et al. 2017).”
• The Binary Neutron Star Event LIGO/Virgo GW170817 160 Days after Merger: Synchrotron Emission across the Electromagnetic Spectrum (2018, background): “…Kasliwal et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Pian et al. 2017; Smartt et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Tanvir et al. 2017; Valenti et al. 2017; Villar et al. 2017) and nonthermal synchrotron emission dominating in the X-rays and 1 Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in…”
• Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Mass Ejection, Electromagnetic Counterparts, and Nucleosynthesis (2018, methodology): “…ejected during and shortly after the merger (Chornock et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Perego et al. 2017a; Tanaka et al. 2017; Tanvir et al. 2017; Utsumi et al. 2017; Villar et al. 2017; Waxman et al. 2018; Kawaguchi et al. 2018; Metzger et al. 2018).”
• The fast, luminous ultraviolet transient AT2018cow: extreme supernova, or disruption of a star by an intermediate-mass black hole? (2018, background): “Furthermore, AT2018cow empirically bears no relation to the (much dimmer, fast-cooling, fast-expanding) optical counterpart of GW170817 (McCully et al. 2017; Kasliwal et al. 2017; Evans et al. 2017; Villar et al. 2017; Pian et al. 2017).”
• A Magnetar Origin for the Kilonova Ejecta in GW170817 (2018, background): “…these give best-fit values for the ejecta masses and mean velocities of the blue and red components of M M v c2 10 , 0.25blue 2 blue» ´ »- and Mred≈0.05Me, vred≈0.1 c, respectively (e.g., Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Kasen et al. 2017; Perego et al. 2017; Villar et al. 2017).”
• Constraints on the neutron star equation of state from AT2017gfo using radiative transfer simulations (2018, background): “…which included quantitative modelling (Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Kilpatrick et al. 2017; Smartt et al. 2017; Tanvir et al. 2017), and later papers based on combined data (Villar et al. 2017; Rosswog et al. 2017a; Perego, Radice & Bernuzzi 2017; Waxman et al. 2017) produced broadly similar results.”