An ASKAP search for a radio counterpart to the first high-significance neutron star-black hole merger LIGO/Virgo S190814bv
- Creators
- Dobie, Dougal
- Stewart, Adam
- Murphy, Tara
- Lenc, Emil
- Wang, Ziteng
- Kaplan, David L.
- Andreoni, Igor
- Banfield, Julie
- Brown, Ian
- Corsi, Alessandra
- De, Kishalay
- Goldstein, Daniel A.
- Hallinan, Gregg
- Hotan, Aidan
- Hotokezaka, Kenta
- Jaodand, Amruta D.
- Karambelkar, Viraj
- Kasliwal, Mansi M.
- McConnell, David
- Mooley, Kunal
- Moss, Vanessa A.
- Newman, Jeffrey A.
- Perley, Daniel A.
- Prakash, Abhishek
- Pritchard, Joshua
- Sadler, Elaine M.
- Sharma, Yashvi
- Ward, Charlotte
- Whiting, Matthew
- Zhou, Rongpu
Abstract
We present results from a search for a radio transient associated with the LIGO/Virgo source S190814bv, a likely neutron star–black hole (NSBH) merger, with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder. We imaged a 30 deg² field at ΔT = 2, 9, and 33 days post-merger at a frequency of 944 MHz, comparing them to reference images from the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey observed 110 days prior to the event. Each epoch of our observations covers 89% of the LIGO/Virgo localization region. We conducted an untargeted search for radio transients in this field, resulting in 21 candidates. For one of these, AT2019osy, we performed multiwavelength follow-up and ultimately ruled out the association with S190814bv. All other candidates are likely unrelated variables, but we cannot conclusively rule them out. We discuss our results in the context of model predictions for radio emission from NSBH mergers and place constrains on the circum-merger density and inclination angle of the merger. This survey is simultaneously the first large-scale radio follow-up of an NSBH merger, and the most sensitive widefield radio transients search to-date.
Additional Information
© 2019 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2019 October 29; revised 2019 November 15; accepted 2019 November 20; published 2019 December 6. D.D. is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. T.M. acknowledges the support of the Australian Research Council through grant DP190100561. D.L.K. and I.B. were supported by NSF grant AST-1816492. Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), project number CE170100004. We acknowledge support by the GROWTH (Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen) project funded by the National Science Foundation PIRE (Partnership in International Research and Education) program under Grant No. 1545949. A.C. acknowledges support from the NSF CAREER award #1455090. D.A.G. acknowledges support from Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51408.001-A. Support for Program number HST-HF2-51408.001-A is provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Development of the PRLS photometric redshift catalog used here was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics under award number DE-SC0007914. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The Australian SKA Pathfinder is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility which is managed by CSIRO. Operation of ASKAP is funded by the Australian Government with support from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. ASKAP uses the resources of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. Establishment of ASKAP, the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre are initiatives of the Australian Government, with support from the Government of Western Australia and the Science and Industry Endowment Fund. We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. The Australia Telescope Compact Array is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility which is funded by the Australian Government for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO. This research has made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services. This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Facilities: ASKAP - , ATCA - , VLA - , Blanco - , Hale, Chandra. - Software: ASKAPsoft (Whiting et al. 2017), BANE (Hancock et al. 2018), CASA (McMullin et al. 2007), pyraf-dbsp (Bellm & Sesar 2016), The Tractor (Lang et al. 2016), TraP (Swinbank et al. 2015).Attached Files
Published - Dobie_2019_ApJL_887_L13.pdf
Submitted - 1910.13647.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 99925
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20191119-094507795
- Australian Government
- Australian Research Council
- DP190100561
- NSF
- AST-1816492
- Australian Research Council
- CE170100004
- NSF
- OISE-1545949
- NSF
- AST-1455090
- NASA Hubble Fellowship
- HST-HF2-51408.001-A
- NASA
- NAS5-26555
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-SC0007914
- Government of Western Australia
- Science and Industry Endowment Fund
- Created
-
2019-11-19Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Astronomy Department