Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2017
Volume 62, Number 1
Saturday–Tuesday, January 28–31, 2017; Washington, DC
Session M3: Electromagnetic Follow-up of Gravitational Wave Candidate EventsFocus
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Sponsoring Units: DGRAV DAP Chair: Marc Favata, Montclair State University Room: Maryland C |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 3:30PM - 4:06PM |
M3.00001: Searches for electromagnetic signatures of gravitational wave sources Invited Speaker: Marcelle Soares-Santos Motivated by the exciting prospect of new wealth of information that will arise from observations of gravitational and electromagnetic radiation from the same astrophysical phenomena, our community has performed a broad range of follow-up programs for LIGO/Virgo events. In this talk, I present an overview of this effort, including results of searches for signatures of the first two LIGO-triggered binary black hole mergers in the 2015-2016 observing campaign, when multiple facilities reported searches in gamma/X-rays, optical, infra-red, and radio wavelengths. I will also discuss plans for upcoming observing campaigns and long term prospects for this exciting emerging field: multi-messenger astrophysics with gravitational waves. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 4:06PM - 4:18PM |
M3.00002: Fermi-LAT Observations of Gravitational Wave Sources Judith Racusin The wide energy range and all-sky survey operations of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) make it an important asset in the search for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave sources. LAT regularly detects long-lasting high-energy gamma-ray emission from short gamma-ray bursts, which are commonly associated with compact binary mergers that include neutron stars. As demonstrated by the recent upper bounds set on LAT emission from GW150914, LVT151012, and GW151226, LAT provides sensitive observations of the large gravitational wave localization regions in normal survey operations. Over the coming years, as LIGO and Virgo approach design sensitivity and will soon be able to detect these mergers, LAT will continue to provide a unique capability to potentially localize and characterize gravitational wave events. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 4:18PM - 4:30PM |
M3.00003: Searching for Coincident Electromagnetic Signals from Advanced LIGO Gravitational-Wave Candidates Using the Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor Tyson Littenberg With the dawn of gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy, multimessenger observations combining the electromagnetic and GW sky are eagerly anticipated. During Advanced LIGO's first observing run (O1), data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) were analyzed in search of electromagnetic transients coincident with GW candidates. The GBM search employs a coherent analysis over all GBM detectors using the full sky-location-dependent instrument response, and ranks candidate events by a Bayesian likelihood statistic. The GBM analysis was performed on candidate events from a search of LIGO data for merging compact binaries of total mass between 2 and 100 solar masses. The gravitational-wave candidate arrival time and its reconstructed source position were used as priors for the search of GBM data. We describe the GBM search for counterparts of the O1 candidates, and highlight improvements to the analysis made in preparation for future LIGO/Virgo observations. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 4:30PM - 4:42PM |
M3.00004: Charged black holes and black hole binaries in Multi-messenger Astronomy Steven Liebling The possibility of observing electromagnetic signals from gravitational wave events holds great promise for gravitational wave astronomy. I discuss studies of black holes and black hole binaries in both Einstein-Maxwell and Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton theories, and their implications for LIGO detections and electromagnetic followups, such as Fermi's report of a coincident followup of GW150914. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 4:42PM - 4:54PM |
M3.00005: Observational Selection Effects with Ground-based Gravitational Wave Detectors Hsin-Yu Chen, Reed Essick, Salvatore Vitale, Daniel Holz, Erik Katsavounidis Ground-based interferometers are not perfectly all-sky instruments, and it is important to account for their behavior when considering the distribution of detected events. In particular, the LIGO detectors are most sensitive to sources above North America and the Indian Ocean and, as the Earth rotates, the sensitive regions are swept across the sky. However, because the detectors do not acquire data uniformly over time, there is a net bias on detectable sources' right ascensions. Both LIGO detectors preferentially collect data during their local night; it is more than twice as likely to be local midnight than noon when both detectors are operating. We discuss these selection effects and how they impact LIGO's observations and electromagnetic follow-up. These effects can inform electromagnetic follow-up activities and optimization, including the possibility of directing observations even before gravitational-wave events occur. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 4:54PM - 5:06PM |
M3.00006: Combining Gravitational Wave Events with their Electromagnetic Counterparts: A Realistic Joint False-Alarm Rate Kendall Ackley, Stephen Eikenberry, Sergey Klimenko We present a false-alarm rate for a joint detection of gravitational wave (GW) events and associated electromagnetic (EM) counterparts for Advanced LIGO and Virgo (LV) observations during the first years of operation. Using simulated GW events and their recostructed probability skymaps, we tile over the error regions using sets of archival wide-field telescope survey images and recover the number of astrophysical transients to be expected during LV-EM followup. With the known GW event injection coordinates we inject artificial electromagnetic (EM) sources at that site based on theoretical and observational models on a one-to-one basis. We calculate the EM false-alarm probability using an unsupervised machine learning algorithm based on shapelet analysis which has shown to be a strong discriminator between astrophysical transients and image artifacts while reducing the set of transients to be manually vetted by five orders of magnitude. We also show the performance of our method in context with other machine-learned transient classification and reduction algorithms, showing comparability without the need for a large set of training data opening the possibility for next-generation telescopes to take advantage of this pipeline for LV-EM followup missions. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 5:06PM - 5:18PM |
M3.00007: Updates to Advanced LIGO and Virgo's Low-Latency Electromagnetic Follow-Up Program Min-A Cho Data from Advanced LIGO (and soon, Virgo) is promptly analyzed to enable electromagnetic follow-up observations by dozens of observing teams. In this talk I present three key changes made to this program for the second observing run, O2. These key changes cover (1) down-selecting from multiple gravitational wave triggers to the event candidate we follow-up on, provided these triggers all describe the same astrophysical event, (2) upgrading to 3-dimensional sky localization probability maps (skymaps) for compact binary coalescence events, and (3) providing additional information about event candidates that will be communicated via GCN notices/VOEvents to our observing partners. I will conclude by describing online low-latency pipelines. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 5:18PM - 5:30PM |
M3.00008: Sky Localization and Electromagnetic Follow-up with Third-Generation Detectors Shreya Anand, Leo Singer, Cole Miller We present a preliminary investigation of the potential of third-generation gravitational-wave (GW) detectors for multi-messenger astronomy, from the standpoint of electromagnetic follow-up and identification of host galaxies. Using approximate sky localization inferred from GW observations, we intend to plan their electromagnetic follow-up in order to pinpoint the host galaxies. This involves simulating GW data, matching it with electromagnetic observations, and converting it into a sky-map used to chart locations of host galaxies of known sources. We aim to understand whether there are identifiable trends for host galaxies of transients in order to address whether a strategy that focuses on individual host galaxies is more optimal than one that locates them based on a statistical trend. Our project also concerns the configuration and calibration of a next generation detector network. Questions we focus on include: at what redshift will sky localization accuracy be limited by detector calibration? Using different combinations of detectors, what sky localization can be achieved? Our research motivates why third generation GW detector networks are crucial in enhancing signals detected and in providing insight into the sources and their physical environments. [Preview Abstract] |
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