No Arabic abstract
Gravitational wave transients, resulting from the merger of two stellar remnants, are now detectable. The properties and rates of these directly relates to the stellar population which gave rise to their progenitors, and thus to other, electromagnetic transients which result from stellar death. We aim to estimate simultaneously the event rates and delay time distribution of gravitational wave-driven compact object mergers together with the rates of core collapse and thermonuclear supernovae within a single consistent stellar population synthesis paradigm. We combine event delay-time distributions at different metallicities from the Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis (BPASS) models with an analytic model of the volume-averaged cosmic star formation rate density and chemical evolution to determine the volume-averaged rates of each event rate at the current time. We estimate rates in excellent agreement with extant observational constraints on core-collapse supernovae, thermonuclear supernovae and long GRBs. We predict rates for gravitational wave mergers based on the same stellar populations, and find rates consistent with current LIGO estimates. We note that tighter constraints on the rates of these events will be required before it is possible to determine their redshift evolution, progenitor metallicity dependence or constrain uncertain aspects of stellar evolution.
We compare the impacts of uncertainties in both binary population synthesis models and the cosmic star formation history on the predicted rates of Gravitational Wave compact binary merger (GW) events. These uncertainties cause the predicted rates of GW events to vary by up to an order of magnitude. Varying the volume-averaged star formation rate density history of the Universe causes the weakest change to our predictions, while varying the metallicity evolution has the strongest effect. Double neutron-star merger rates are more sensitive to assumed neutron-star kick velocity than the cosmic star formation history. Varying certain parameters affects merger rates in different ways depending on the mass of the merging compact objects; thus some of the degeneracy may be broken by looking at all the event rates rather than restricting ourselves to one class of mergers.
As of today, we have directly detected exactly one source in both gravitational waves (GWs) and electromagnetic (EM) radiation, the binary neutron star merger GW170817, its associated gamma-ray burst GRB170817A, and the subsequent kilonova SSS17a/AT 2017gfo. Within ten years, we will detect hundreds of events, including new classes of events such as neutron-star-black-hole mergers, core-collapse supernovae, and almost certainly something completely unexpected. As we build this sample, we will explore exotic astrophysical topics ranging from nucleosynthesis, stellar evolution, general relativity, high-energy astrophysics, nuclear matter, to cosmology. The discovery potential is extraordinary, and investments in this area will yield major scientific breakthroughs. Here we outline some of the most exciting scientific questions that can be answered by combining GW and EM observations.
Pioneering efforts aiming at the development of multi-messenger gravitational wave and electromagnetic astronomy have been made. An electromagnetic observation follow-up program of candidate gravitational wave events has been performed (Dec 17 2009 to Jan 8 2010 and Sep 4 to Oct 20 2010) during the recent runs of the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors. It involved ground-based and space electromagnetic facilities observing the sky at optical, X-ray and radio wavelengths. The joint gravitational wave and electromagnetic observation study requires the development of specific image analysis procedures able to discriminate the possible electromagnetic counterpart of gravitational wave triggers from contaminant/background events. The paper presents an overview of the electromagnetic follow-up program and the image analysis procedures.
We report the results of optical follow-up observations of 29 gravitational-wave triggers during the first half of the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration (LVC) O3 run with the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) in its prototype 4-telescope configuration (GOTO-4). While no viable electromagnetic counterpart candidate was identified, we estimate our 3D (volumetric) coverage using test light curves of on- and off-axis gamma-ray bursts and kilonovae. In cases where the source region was observable immediately, GOTO-4 was able to respond to a GW alert in less than a minute. The average time of first observation was $8.79$ hours after receiving an alert ($9.90$ hours after trigger). A mean of $732.3$ square degrees were tiled per event, representing on average $45.3$ per cent of the LVC probability map, or $70.3$ per cent of the observable probability. This coverage will further improve as the facility scales up alongside the localisation performance of the evolving gravitational-wave detector network. Even in its 4-telescope prototype configuration, GOTO is capable of detecting AT2017gfo-like kilonovae beyond 200~Mpc in favourable observing conditions. We cannot currently place meaningful electromagnetic limits on the population of distant ($hat{D}_L = 1.3$~Gpc) binary black hole mergers because our test models are too faint to recover at this distance. However, as GOTO is upgraded towards its full 32-telescope, 2 node (La Palma & Australia) configuration, it is expected to be sufficiently sensitive to cover the predicted O4 binary neutron star merger volume, and will be able to respond to both northern and southern triggers.
Gravitational waves (GWs) from binary black hole (BBH) mergers provide a new probe of massive-star evolution and the formation channels of binary compact objects. By coupling the growing sample of BBH systems with population synthesis models, we can begin to constrain the parameters of such models and glean unprecedented knowledge about the inherent physical processes that underpin binary stellar evolution. In this study, we apply a hierarchical Bayesian model to mass measurements from a synthetic GW sample to constrain the physical prescriptions in population models and the relative fraction of systems generated from various channels. We employ population models of two canonical formation scenarios in our analysis --- isolated binary evolution involving a common-envelope phase and dynamical formation within globular clusters --- with model variations for different black hole natal kick prescriptions. We show that solely with chirp mass measurements, it is possible to constrain natal kick prescriptions and the relative fraction of systems originating from each formation channel with $mathcal{O}(100)$ of confident detections. This framework can be extended to include additional formation scenarios, model parameters, and measured properties of the compact binary.