Constraints on the Physical Properties of GW190814 through Simulations Based on DECam Follow-up Observations by the Dark Energy Survey

Journal Article · Thu Sep 24 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/abafaa· OSTI ID:1637635

Morgan, R. ; Soares-Santos, M. ; Annis, J. ; Herner, K. ; Garcia, A. ; Palmese, A. ; Drlica-Wagner, A. ; Kessler, R. ; García-Bellido, J. ; Bachmann, T. G. ; Sherman, N. ; Allam, S. ; Bechtol, K. ; Bom, C. R. ; Brout, D. ; Butler, R. E.; Butner, M.; Cartier, R.; Chen, H. ; Conselice, C. ; Cook, E.; Davis, T. M. ; Doctor, Z. ; Farr, B. ; Figueiredo, A. L.; Finley, D. A. ; Foley, R. J.; Galarza, J. Y.; Gill, M. S. ; Gruendl, R. A. ; Holz, D. E. ; Kuropatkin, N. ; Lidman, C. ; Lin, H. ; Malik, U.; Mann, A. W. ; Marriner, J. ; Marshall, J. L. ; Martínez-Vázquez, C. E. ; Meza, N.; Neilsen, E. ; Nicolaou, C. ; Olivares E., F. ; Paz-Chinchón, F.; Points, S. ; Quirola-Vásquez, J.; Rodriguez, O. ; Sako, M.; Scolnic, D.; Smith, M. ; Sobreira, F. ; Tucker, D. L. ; Vivas, A. K. ; Wiesner, M. ; Wood, M. L. ; Yanny, B. ; Zenteno, A.; Abbott, T. C.; Aguena, M.; Avila, S.; Bertin, E.; Bhargava, S.; Brooks, D. ; Burke, D. L.; Rosell, A. Carnero ; Kind, M. Carrasco ; Carretero, J. ; Costa, L. da; Costanzi, M.; De Vicente, J. ; Desai, S. ; Diehl, H. T. ; Doel, P.; Eifler, T. F. ; Everett, S.; Flaugher, B. ; Frieman, J. ; Gaztanaga, E. ; Gerdes, D. W. ; Gruen, D. ; Gschwend, J. ; Gutierrez, G. ; Hartley, W. G.; Hinton, S. R. ; Hollowood, D. L. ; Honscheid, K. ; James, D. J. ; Kuehn, K. ; Lahav, O. ; Lima, M.; Maia, M. G. ; March, M.; Miquel, R. ; Ogando, R. C. ; Plazas, A. A. ; Roodman, A. ; Sanchez, E. ; Scarpine, V.; Schubnell, M. ; Serrano, S.; Sevilla-Noarbe, I. ; Suchyta, E. ; Tarle, G.

On 14 August 2019, the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations alerted the astronomical community of a high significance detection of gravitational waves and classified the source as a neutron star - black hole (NSBH) merger, the first event of its kind. In search of an optical counterpart, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Gravitational Wave Search and Discovery Team performed the most thorough and accurate analysis to date, targeting the entire 90 percent confidence level localization area with Blanco/DECam 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, and 16 nights after the merger was detected. Objects with varying brightness were detected by the DES Search and Discovery Pipeline and we systematically reduced the list of candidate counterparts through catalog matching, light curve properties, host-galaxy photometric redshifts, SOAR spectroscopic follow-up observations, and machine-learning-based photometric classification. All candidates were rejected as counterparts to the merger. To quantify the sensitivity of our search, we applied our selection criteria to simulations of supernovae and kilonovae as they would appear in the DECam observations. Since there are no explicit light curve models for NSBH mergers, we characterize our sensitivity with binary NS models that are expected to have similar optical signatures as NSBH mergers. We find that if a kilonova occurred during this merger, configurations where the ejected matter is greater than 0.07 solar masses, has lanthanide abundance less than 10-8.56, and has a velocity between 0.18c and 0.21c are disfavored at the 2σ level. Furthermore, we estimate that our background reduction methods are capable of associating gravitational wave signals with a detected electromagnetic counterpart at the 4σ level in 95% of future follow-up observations.

• Research Organization: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); National Science Foundation (NSF); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Heising-Simons Foundation; David and Lucile Packard Foundation
• Contributing Organization: DES Collaboration
• Grant/Contract Number: AC02-07CH11359; NNG17PX03C; AST-1815935; AST-1138766; AST-1536171; SC0019193
• OSTI ID: 1637635
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1783802
• Report Number(s): arXiv:2006.07385; FERMILAB-PUB-20-219-AE; oai:inspirehep.net:1801199; TRN: US2201647
• Journal Information: The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 901, Issue 1; ISSN 1538-4357
• Publisher: Institute of Physics (IOP)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Gravitational wave sources
Optical observation
Light curve classification
Astronomical simulations
46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOG