The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. I. Discovery of the Optical Counterpart Using the Dark Energy Camera

By M. Soares-Santos, D. Holz, James Annis, Ryan Chornock, K. Herner, E. Berger, D. Brout, H. Chen, R. Kessler, M. Sako and 135 more. Astrophysical Journal, 2017

450 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) discovery of the optical counterpart of the first binary neutron star merger detected through gravitational-wave emission, GW170817. Our observations commenced 10.5 hr post-merger, as soon as the localization region became accessible from Chile. We imaged 70 deg2 in the i and z bands, covering 93% of the initial integrated localization probability, to a depth necessary to identify likely optical counterparts (e.g., a kilonova). At 11.4 hr post-merger we detected a bright optical transient located from the nucleus of NGC 4993 at redshift z = 0.0098, consistent (for km s−1 Mpc−1) with the distance of 40 ± 8 Mpc reported by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration (LVC). At detection the transient had magnitudes of and , and thus an absolute magnitude of , in the luminosity range expected for a kilonova. We identified 1500 potential transient candidates. Applying simple selection criteria aimed at rejecting background events such as supernovae, we find the transient associated with NGC 4993 as the only remaining plausible counterpart, and reject chance coincidence at the 99.5% confidence level. We therefore conclude that the optical counterpart we have identified near NGC 4993 is associated with GW170817. This discovery ushers in the era of multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves and demonstrates the power of DECam to identify the optical counterparts of gravitational-wave sources.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d4f34fa199eda6b186365b31a84e743ae17c80c7

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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7. Bing Zhang
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Citations in the corpus

• The Binary Neutron Star Event LIGO/Virgo GW170817 160 Days after Merger: Synchrotron Emission across the Electromagnetic Spectrum (2018, background): “…Coulter et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; 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…”
• ATLAS: A High-cadence All-sky Survey System (2018, background): “It was discovered in NGC4993 at a distance of only 40 Mpc by several telescopes as soon as night fell in Chile (Arcavi et al. 2017b; Coulter et al. 2017; Lipunov et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Tanvir et al. 2017; Valenti et al. 2017).”
• Constraints on the neutron star equation of state from AT2017gfo using radiative transfer simulations (2018, background): “…the E-mail: mcoughli@caltech.edu joint gravitational wave and gamma-ray detections (Arcavi et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Lipunov et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Tanvir et al. 2017; Valenti et al. 2017) led to intensive followup campaigns to show that this was an unusual and…”
• GW170817: Joint Constraint on the Neutron Star Equation of State from Multimessenger Observations (2017, background): “…al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Evans et al. 2017; Hallinan et al. 2017; Kasliwal et al. 2017; Murguia-Berthier et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Smartt et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Tanaka et al. 2017; Tanvir et al. 2017; Troja et al. 2017).”
• Merging black holes in young star clusters (2019, background): “…to gamma rays (Abbott et al. 2017d; 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. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Pian et al. 2017; Alexander et al. 2017). c© 0000…”
• Three-dimensional GRMHD Simulations of Neutrino-cooled Accretion Disks from Neutron Star Mergers (2017, result): “Eleven hours after the merger, an optical counterpart was discovered (Coulter et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Valenti et al. 2017; Arcavi et al. 2017; Lipunov et al. 2017; Evans et al. 2017) with a luminosity, thermal spectrum, and rapid temporal decay consistent with “kilonova” (KN)…”
• Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Mass Ejection, Electromagnetic Counterparts, and Nucleosynthesis (2018, background): “…Coulter et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Evans et al. 2017; Kasliwal et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Smartt et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Tanaka et al. 2017; Tanvir et al. 2017) provided compelling evidence that NS mergers are one of the main sources of…”
• Mass Ejection from the Remnant of a Binary Neutron Star Merger: Viscous-radiation Hydrodynamics Study (2017, background): “…simultaneously with GW170817(e.g., Abbott et al. 2017b; Arcavi et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Kasliwal et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Pian et al. 2017; Shappee et al. 2017; Smartt et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Tanaka et al. 2017).”
• A Magnetar Origin for the Kilonova Ejecta in GW170817 (2018, background): “…of only ≈40Mpc (Abbott et al. 2017c; Arcavi et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Covino et al. 2017; Díaz 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Evans et al. 2017; Hu et al. 2017; Kilpatrick et al. 2017; McCully et al. 2017; Smartt et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Utsumi et al. 2017; Buckley et al. 2018).”
• Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE (2018, methodology): “The relatively massive S0 galaxy NGC 4993 is identified as the host galaxy of GW170817 (e.g. Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017).”
• Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2018, background): “…et al. 2017), to near-IR/optical(Chornock et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Pian et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017), to X-ray(Margutti et al. 2017; Troja et al. 2017), to γ-ray(Abbott et al. 2017c; Goldstein et al. 2017; Savchenko et al.…”