FERMI GBM OBSERVATIONS OF LIGO GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE EVENT GW150914

By V. Connaughton, E. Burns, A. Goldstein, L. Blackburn, M. Briggs, Binbin Zhang, Jordan B. Camp, N. Christensen, C. Hui, P. Jenke and 25 more. 2016

280 citations recorded by the source corpus.

With an instantaneous view of 70% of the sky, the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) is an excellent partner in the search for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational-wave (GW) events. GBM observations at the time of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) event GW150914 reveal the presence of a weak transient above 50 keV, 0.4 s after the GW event, with a false-alarm probability of 0.0022 (2.9σ). This weak transient lasting 1 s was not detected by any other instrument and does not appear to be connected with other previously known astrophysical, solar, terrestrial, or magnetospheric activity. Its localization is ill-constrained but consistent with the direction of GW150914. The duration and spectrum of the transient event are consistent with a weak short gamma-ray burst (GRB) arriving at a large angle to the direction in which Fermi was pointing where the GBM detector response is not optimal. If the GBM transient is associated with GW150914, then this electromagnetic signal from a stellar mass black hole binary merger is unexpected. We calculate a luminosity in hard X-ray emission between 1 keV and 10 MeV of 1.8 − 1.0 + 1.5 × 10 49 erg s−1. Future joint observations of GW events by LIGO/Virgo and Fermi GBM could reveal whether the weak transient reported here is a plausible counterpart to GW150914 or a chance coincidence, and will further probe the connection between compact binary mergers and short GRBs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e9f4fc1560207ee24d2f18fadacf60a50c940681

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The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. J. Eldridge
3. Zoltán Haiman
4. B. Kocsis
5. P. Mészáros
6. Abraham Loeb
7. E. Stanway
8. Pawan Kumar

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Bing Zhang
2. Abraham Loeb
3. P. Mészáros
4. B. Kocsis
5. D. Fox
6. Zoltán Haiman
7. Tassos Fragos
8. G. Meynet

Citations in the corpus

• ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPARTS TO BLACK HOLE MERGERS DETECTED BY LIGO (2016, background): “The proposal was motivated by the Fermi GBM detection of a γ-ray transient 0.4 s after GW150914 (Connaughton et al. 2016).”
• MERGERS OF CHARGED BLACK HOLES: GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE EVENTS, SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS, AND FAST RADIO BURSTS (2016, background): “The putative short GRB signal associated with GW 150914 (Connaughton et al. 2016) may be interpreted with this model.”
• BPASS predictions for binary black hole mergers (2016, background): “The event was not securely localised in electromagnetic follow-up (although see Connaughton et al. 2016), and hence its host galaxy, and the stellar population that generated it, remains unidentified.”
• A Deep Chandra X-Ray Study of Neutron Star Coalescence GW170817 (2017, background): “Extensive follow-up observations based on this GW event found no robust electromagnetic (EM) counterparts (e.g., Abbott et al. 2016b; Connaughton et al. 2016; Evans et al. 2016; Soares-Santos et al. 2016), consistent with theoretical predictions for stellar-mass BH mergers.”
• Rapid and Bright Stellar-mass Binary Black Hole Mergers in Active Galactic Nuclei (2016, background): “…plausible host galaxies (Abbott et al. 2016b; Bartos et al. 2015, 2016), or other cosmic messengers with allsky detection capabilities, such as gamma rays (Abbott et al. 2016b; Connaughton et al. 2016) and high-energy neutrinos (Adrián-Martínez et al. 2016; Aartsen et al. 2014; Baret et al. 2012).”
• Multi-messenger astrophysics (2019, background): “However, despite intensive searches, no other messengers associated with BBH mergers have been detected so far, except for a possible γ-ray burst [24] in GW150914.”
• The spin of the second-born black hole in coalescing binary black holes (2018, background): “Finally, motivated by the existence of a potential electromagnetic counterpart for GW150914 in gamma-rays (Connaughton et al. 2016), a formation channel from a single star, via the fragmentation of their rapidly rotating cores, has been suggested (Loeb 2016; D’Orazio & Loeb 2017).”