No Arabic abstract
The first observation of a binary neutron star coalescence by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors offers an unprecedented opportunity to study matter under the most extreme conditions. After such a merger, a compact remnant is left over whose nature depends primarily on the masses of the inspiralling objects and on the equation of state of nuclear matter. This could be either a black hole or a neutron star (NS), with the latter being either long-lived or too massive for stability implying delayed collapse to a black hole. Here, we present a search for gravitational waves from the remnant of the binary neutron star merger GW170817 using data from Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. We search for short ($lesssim1$ s) and intermediate-duration ($lesssim 500$ s) signals, which includes gravitational-wave emission from a hypermassive NS or supramassive NS, respectively. We find no signal from the post-merger remnant. Our derived strain upper limits are more than an order of magnitude larger than those predicted by most models. For short signals, our best upper limit on the root-sum-square of the gravitational-wave strain emitted from 1--4 kHz is $h_{rm rss}^{50%}=2.1times 10^{-22}$ Hz$^{-1/2}$ at 50% detection efficiency. For intermediate-duration signals, our best upper limit at 50% detection efficiency is $h_{rm rss}^{50%}=8.4times 10^{-22}$ Hz$^{-1/2}$ for a millisecond magnetar model, and $h_{rm rss}^{50%}=5.9times 10^{-22}$ Hz$^{-1/2}$ for a bar-mode model. These results indicate that post-merger emission from a similar event may be detectable when advanced detectors reach design sensitivity or with next-generation detectors.
We present an effective, low-dimensionality frequency-domain template for the gravitational wave signal from the stellar remnants from binary neutron star coalescence. A principal component decomposition of a suite of numerical simulations of binary neutron star mergers is used to construct orthogonal basis functions for the amplitude and phase spectra of the waveforms for a variety of neutron star equations of state and binary mass configurations. We review the phenomenology of late merger / post-merger gravitational wave emission in binary neutron star coalescence and demonstrate how an understanding of the dynamics during and after the merger leads to the construction of a universal spectrum. We also provide a discussion of the prospects for detecting the post-merger signal in future gravitational wave detectors as a potential contribution to the science case for third generation instruments. The template derived in our analysis achieves $>90%$ match across a wide variety of merger waveforms and strain sensitivity spectra for current and potential gravitational wave detectors. A Fisher matrix analysis yields a preliminary estimate of the typical uncertainty in the determination of the dominant post-merger oscillation frequency $f_{mathrm{peak}}$ as $delta f_{mathrm{peak}} sim 50$Hz. Using recently derived correlations between $f_{mathrm{peak}}$ and the neutron star radii, this suggests potential constraints on the radius of a fiducial neutron star of $sim 220$,m. Such measurements would only be possible for nearby ($sim 30$Mpc) sources with advanced LIGO but become more feasible for planned upgrades to advanced LIGO and other future instruments, leading to constraints on the high density neutron star equation of state which are independent and complementary to those inferred from the pre-merger inspiral gravitational wave signal.
One unanswered question about the binary neutron star coalescence GW170817 is the nature of its post-merger remnant. A previous search for post-merger gravitational waves targeted high-frequency signals from a possible neutron star remnant with a maximum signal duration of 500 s. Here we revisit the neutron star remnant scenario with a focus on longer signal durations up until the end of the Second Advanced LIGO-Virgo Observing run, 8.5 days after the coalescence of GW170817. The main physical scenario for such emission is the power-law spindown of a massive magnetar-like remnant. We use four independent search algorithms with varying degrees of restrictiveness on the signal waveformand different ways of dealing with noise artefacts. In agreement with theoretical estimates, we find no significant signal candidates. Through simulated signals, we quantify that with the current detector sensitivity, nowhere in the studied parameter space are we sensitive to a signal from more than 1 Mpc away, compared to the actual distance of 40 Mpc. This study however serves as a prototype for post-merger analyses in future observing runs with expected higher sensitivity.
X-ray observations of some short gamma-ray bursts indicate that a long-lived neutron star can form as a remnant of a binary neutron star merger. We develop a gravitational-wave detection pipeline for a long-lived binary neutron star merger remnant guided by these counterpart electromagnetic observations. We determine the distance out to which a gravitational-wave signal can be detected with Advanced LIGO at design sensitivity and the Einstein Telescope using this method, guided by X-ray data from GRB140903A as an example. Such gravitational waves can in principle be detected out to $sim$ 20 Mpc for Advanced LIGO and $sim$ 450 Mpc for the Einstein Telescope assuming a fiducial ellipticity of $10^{-2}$. However, in practice we can rule out such high values of the ellipticity as the total energy emitted in gravitational waves would be greater than the total rotational energy budget of the system. We show how these observations can be used to place upper limits on the ellipticity using these energy considerations. For GRB140903A, the upper limit on the ellipticity is $10^{-3}$, which lowers the detectable distance to $sim$ 2 Mpc and $sim$ 45 Mpc for Advanced LIGO and the Einstein Telescope, respectively.
Two neutron stars merge somewhere in the Universe approximately every 10 seconds, creating violent explosions observable in gravitational waves and across the electromagnetic spectrum. The transformative coincident gravitational-wave and electromagnetic observations of the binary neutron star merger GW170817 gave invaluable insights into these cataclysmic collisions, probing bulk nuclear matter at supranuclear densities, the jet structure of gamma-ray bursts, the speed of gravity, and the cosmological evolution of the local Universe, among other things. Despite the wealth of information, it is still unclear when the remnant of GW170817 collapsed to form a black hole. Evidence from other short gamma-ray bursts indicates a large fraction of mergers may form long-lived neutron stars. We review what is known observationally and theoretically about binary neutron star post-merger remnants. From a theoretical perspective, we review our understanding of the evolution of short- and long-lived merger remnants, including fluid, magnetic-field, and temperature evolution. These considerations impact prospects of detection of gravitational waves from either short- or long-lived neutron star remnants which potentially allows for new probes into the hot nuclear equation of state in conditions inaccessible in terrestrial experiments. We also review prospects for determining post-merger physics from current and future electromagnetic observations, including kilonovae and late-time x-ray and radio afterglow observations.
We present Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra imaging, combined with Very Large Telescope MUSE integral field spectroscopy of the counterpart and host galaxy of the first binary neutron star merger detected via gravitational wave emission by LIGO & Virgo, GW170817. The host galaxy, NGC 4993, is an S0 galaxy at z=0.009783. There is evidence for large, face-on spiral shells in continuum imaging, and edge-on spiral features visible in nebular emission lines. This suggests that NGC 4993 has undergone a relatively recent (<1 Gyr) ``dry merger. This merger may provide the fuel for a weak active nucleus seen in Chandra imaging. At the location of the counterpart, HST imaging implies there is no globular or young stellar cluster, with a limit of a few thousand solar masses for any young system. The population in the vicinity is predominantly old with <1% of any light arising from a population with ages <500 Myr. Both the host galaxy properties and those of the transient location are consistent with the distributions seen for short-duration gamma-ray bursts, although the source position lies well within the effective radius (r_e ~ 3 kpc), providing an r_e-normalized offset that is closer than ~90% of short GRBs. For the long delay time implied by the stellar population, this suggests that the kick velocity was significantly less than the galaxy escape velocity. We do not see any narrow host galaxy interstellar medium features within the counterpart spectrum, implying low extinction, and that the binary may lie in front of the bulk of the host galaxy.