Gravitational Waves and Gamma-rays from a Binary Neutron Star Merger: GW170817 and GRB 170817A

By B. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. Abbott, F. Acernese, K. Ackley, Christopher M. Adams, T. Adams, P. Addesso, Rana X. Adhikari, V. Adya and 1,139 more. 2017

1,378 citations recorded by the source corpus.

On 2017 August 17, the gravitational-wave event GW170817 was observed by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors, and the gamma-ray burst (GRB) GRB 170817A was observed independently by the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, and the Anticoincidence Shield for the Spectrometer for the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory. The probability of the near-simultaneous temporal and spatial observation of GRB 170817A and GW170817 occurring by chance is $5.0\times 10^{-8}$. We therefore confirm binary neutron star mergers as a progenitor of short GRBs. The association of GW170817 and GRB 170817A provides new insight into fundamental physics and the origin of short gamma-ray bursts. We use the observed time delay of $(+1.74 \pm 0.05)\,$s between GRB 170817A and GW170817 to: (i) constrain the difference between the speed of gravity and the speed of light to be between $-3\times 10^{-15}$ and $+7\times 10^{-16}$ times the speed of light, (ii) place new bounds on the violation of Lorentz invariance, (iii) present a new test of the equivalence principle by constraining the Shapiro delay between gravitational and electromagnetic radiation. We also use the time delay to constrain the size and bulk Lorentz factor of the region emitting the gamma rays. GRB 170817A is the closest short GRB with a known distance, but is between 2 and 6 orders of magnitude less energetic than other bursts with measured redshift. A new generation of gamma-ray detectors, and subthreshold searches in existing detectors, will be essential to detect similar short bursts at greater distances. Finally, we predict a joint detection rate for the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor and the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors of 0.1--1.4 per year during the 2018-2019 observing run and 0.3--1.7 per year at design sensitivity.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/24e62d0795ba63f2e322c42d3ef5f557e492f9a9

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Citations in the corpus

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 (2017, methodology): “…ejecta mass to the amount necessary to reproduce the Milk Way r-process production rate using the updated BNS merger rate inferred from Advanced LIGO of = - +R 15000 1220 3200 Gpc−3 yr−1 (Abbott et al. 2017d) following a similar methodology as Cowperthwaite et al. (2017) and Kasen et al. (2017).”
Completed SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Cosmological implications from two decades of spectroscopic surveys at the Apache Point Observatory (2020, methodology): “Similar efforts include the use of other distance indicators such as the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB; e.g., Freedman et al. 2020), Tully-Fisher relation in galaxies (TFR; e.g., Neill et al. 2014), or gravitational waves from neutron star-neutron star mergers (e.g., Abbott et al. 2017a).”
Merging black holes in young star clusters (2019, background): “…predicted by MOBSE depends on progenitor’s metallicity (the maximum BH mass being higher at lower metallicity) and is consistent with LIGO-Virgo detections (Abbott et al. 2016a; Abbott et al. 2016b; Abbott et al. 2016c, 2017a,f,b; The LIGO Scientific Collaboration & the Virgo Collaboration 2018).”