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Register a new userAn Archival Search for Neutron-Star Mergers in Gravitational Waves and Very-High-Energy Gamma Rays
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The recent discovery of electromagnetic signals in coincidence with neutron-star mergers has solidified the importance of multimessenger campaigns in studying the most energetic astrophysical events. Pioneering multimessenger observatories, such as LIGO/Virgo and IceCube, record many candidate signals below the detection significance threshold. These sub-threshold event candidates are promising targets for multimessenger studies, as the information provided by them may, when combined with contemporaneous gamma-ray observations, lead to significant detections. Here we describe a new method that uses such candidates to search for transient events using archival very-high-energy gamma-ray data from imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs). We demonstrate the application of this method to sub-threshold binary neutron star (BNS) merger candidates identified in Advanced LIGOs first observing run. We identify eight hours of archival VERITAS observations coincident with seven BNS merger candidates and search them for TeV emission. No gamma-ray emission is detected; we calculate upper limits on the integral flux and compare them to a short gamma-ray burst model. We anticipate this search method to serve as a starting point for IACT searches with future LIGO/Virgo data releases as well as in other sub-threshold studies for multimessenger transients, such as IceCube neutrinos. Furthermore, it can be deployed immediately with other current-generation IACTs, and has the potential for real-time use that places minimal burden on experimental operations. Lastly, this method may serve as a pilot for studies with the Cherenkov Telescope Array, which has the potential to observe even larger fields of view in its divergent pointing mode.
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The recent discovery of electromagnetic signals in coincidence with gravitational waves from neutron-star mergers has solidified the importance of multimessenger campaigns for studying the most energetic astrophysical events. Pioneering multimessenger observatories, such as the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave detectors and the IceCube neutrino observatory, record many candidate signals that fall short of the detection significance threshold. These sub-threshold event candidates are promising targets for multimessenger studies, as the information provided by these candidates may, when combined with time-coincident gamma-ray observations, lead to significant detections. In this contribution, I describe our use of sub-threshold binary neutron star merger candidates identified in Advanced LIGOs first observing run (O1) to search for transient events in very-high-energy gamma rays using archival observations from the VERITAS imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope array. I describe the promise of this technique for future joint sub-threshold searches.
We conduct a search for periodic emission in the very high-energy gamma-ray band (VHE; E > 100 GeV) from a total of 13 pulsars in an archival VERITAS data set with a total exposure of over 450 hours. The set of pulsars includes many of the brightest young gamma-ray pulsars visible in the Northern Hemisphere. The data analysis resulted in non-detections of pulsed VHE gamma rays from each pulsar. Upper limits on a potential VHE gamma-ray flux are derived at the 95% confidence level above three energy thresholds using two methods. These are the first such searches for pulsed VHE emission from each of the pulsars, and the obtained limits constrain a possible flux component manifesting at VHEs as is seen for the Crab pulsar.
A new ground-based wide-field extensive air shower array known as the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory promises a new window to monitoring the $sim$100 GeV gamma-ray sky with the potential for detecting a high energy spectral cutoff in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). It represents a roughly 15 times sensitivity gain over the previous generation of wide-field gamma-ray air shower instruments and is able to detect the Crab Nebula at high significance ($>$5 $sigma$) with each daily transit. Its wide field-of-view ($sim$2 sr) and $>$95% uptime make it an ideal instrument for detecting GRB emission at $sim$100 GeV with an expectation for observing $sim$1 GRB per year based on existing measurements of GRB emission. An all-sky, self-triggered search for VHE emission produced by GRBs with HAWC has been developed. We present the results of this search on three characteristic GRB emission timescales, 0.2 seconds, 1 second, and 10 seconds, in the first year of the fully-populated HAWC detector which is the most sensitive dataset to date. No significant detections were found, allowing us to place upper limits on the rate of GRBs containing appreciable emission in the $sim$100 GeV band. These constraints exclude previously unexamined parameter space.
The first multimessenger observation of a neutron star merger was independently detected in gamma-rays by Fermi-GBM and INTEGRAL SPI-ACS and gravitational waves by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. Gravitational waves are emitted from systems with accelerating quadrupole moments, and detectable sources are expected to be compact objects. Nearly all distant astrophysical gamma-ray sources are compact objects. Therefore, serendipitous observations of these two messengers will continue to uncover the sources of gravitational waves and gamma-rays, and enable multimessenger science across the Astro2020 thematic areas. This requires upgrades to the ground-based gravitational wave network and ~keV-MeV gamma-ray coverage for observations of neutron star mergers, and broadband coverage in both gravitational waves and gamma-rays to monitor other expected joint sources.
We present the results of a joint observational campaign between the Green Bank radio telescope and the VERITAS gamma-ray telescope, which searched for a correlation between the emission of very-high-energy (VHE) gamma rays ($E_{gamma} >$ 150 GeV) and Giant Radio Pulses (GRPs) from the Crab pulsar at 8.9 GHz. A total of 15366 GRPs were recorded during 11.6 hours of simultaneous observations, which were made across four nights in December 2008 and in November and December 2009. We searched for an enhancement of the pulsed gamma-ray emission within time windows placed around the arrival time of the GRP events. In total, 8 different time windows with durations ranging from 0.033 ms to 72 s were positioned at three different locations relative to the GRP to search for enhanced gamma-ray emission which lagged, led, or was concurrent with, the GRP event. Further, we performed separate searches on main pulse GRPs and interpulse GRPs and on the most energetic GRPs in our data sample. No significant enhancement of pulsed VHE emission was found in any of the preformed searches. We set upper limits of 5-10 times the average VHE flux of the Crab pulsar on the flux simultaneous with interpulse GRPs on single-rotation-period time scales. On $sim$8-second time scales around interpulse GRPs, we set an upper limit of 2-3 times the average VHE flux. Within the framework of recent models for pulsed VHE emission from the Crab pulsar, the expected VHE-GRP emission correlations are below the derived limits.
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