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Title: Radio Follow-Up of Gravitational-Wave Triggers during Advanced LIGO 01

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal. Letters (Online)
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [4]; ORCiD logo [5];  [6]; ORCiD logo [7]; ORCiD logo [8]; ORCiD logo [9]; ORCiD logo [2]
  1. Texas Tech Univ., Lubbock, TX (United States)
  2. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  3. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States); Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
  4. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, NM (United States)
  5. Univ. of Copenhagen, Copenhagen (Denmark)
  6. Texas Tech Univ., Lubbock, TX (United States); Westview High School, Portland, OR (United States)
  7. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
  8. Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot (Israel)
  9. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

We present radio follow-up observations carried out with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array during the first observing run (O1) of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). A total of three gravitational-wave triggers were followed-up during the ≈4 months of O1, from 2015 September to 2016 January. Two of these triggers, GW150914 and GW151226, are binary black hole (BH) merger events of high significance. A third trigger, G194575, was subsequently declared as an event of no interest (i.e., a false alarm). Our observations targeted selected optical transients identified by the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory in the Advanced LIGO error regions of the three triggers, and a limited region of the gravitational-wave localization area of G194575 not accessible to optical telescopes due to Sun constraints, where a possible high-energy transient was identified. No plausible radio counterparts to GW150914 and GW151226 were found, in agreement with expectations for binary BH mergers. We show that combining optical and radio observations is key to identifying contaminating radio sources that may be found in the follow-up of gravitational-wave triggers, such as emission associated with star formation and active galactic nuclei. We discuss our results in the context of the theoretical predictions for radio counterparts to gravitational-wave transients, and describe our future plans for the radio follow-up of Advanced LIGO (and Virgo) triggers.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1393080
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal. Letters (Online), Vol. 829, Issue 2; ISSN 2041-8213
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 17 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (13)

Prospects for observing and localizing gravitational-wave transients with Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA journal April 2018
Jets in Hydrogen-poor Superluminous Supernovae: Constraints from a Comprehensive Analysis of Radio Observations journal March 2018
A Case Study of On-the-fly Wide-field Radio Imaging Applied to the Gravitational Wave Event GW151226 journal April 2018
Optimized Radio Follow-up of Binary Neutron-star Mergers journal November 2018
Low-latency Gravitational-wave Alerts for Multimessenger Astronomy during the Second Advanced LIGO and Virgo Observing Run journal April 2019
Radio Follow-up of a Candidate γ -Ray Transient in the Sky Localization Area of GW170608 journal October 2019
Prospects for observing and localizing gravitational-wave transients with Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA text January 2020
Low-latency Gravitational-wave Alerts for Multimessenger Astronomy during the Second Advanced LIGO and Virgo Observing Run other January 2019
Prospects for observing and localizing gravitational-wave transients with Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA other January 2020
Jets in Hydrogen-poor Super-luminous Supernovae: Constraints from a Comprehensive Analysis of Radio Observations text January 2017
A Case Study of On-the-Fly Wide-Field Radio Imaging Applied to the Gravitational-wave Event GW 151226 text January 2018
Low-Latency Gravitational Wave Alerts for Multi-Messenger Astronomy During the Second Advanced LIGO and Virgo Observing Run text January 2019
Radio follow-up of a candidate gamma-ray transient in the sky localization area of GW170608 text January 2019

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