ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPARTS TO BLACK HOLE MERGERS DETECTED BY LIGO

@article{Loeb2016ELECTROMAGNETICCT,
  title={ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPARTS TO BLACK HOLE MERGERS DETECTED BY LIGO},
  author={Abraham Loeb},
  journal={The Astrophysical Journal Letters},
  year={2016},
  volume={819}
}
  • A. Loeb
  • Published 15 February 2016
  • Physics
  • The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Mergers of stellar-mass black holes (BHs), such as GW150914 observed by Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), are not expected to have electromagnetic counterparts. However, the Fermi GBM detector identified a γ-ray transient 0.4 s after the gravitational wave (GW) signal GW150914 with consistent sky localization. I show that the two signals might be related if the BH binary detected by LIGO originated from two clumps in a dumbbell configuration that formed when the core… 
View on IOP Publishing
arxiv.org
172 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
6
Background Citations
101
Methods Citations
6
Results Citations
6

172 Citations

Single progenitor model for GW150914 and GW170104

The merger of stellar-mass black holes (BHs) is not expected to generate detectable electromagnetic (EM) emission. However, the gravitational wave (GW) events GW150914 and GW170104, detected by the…

Limits on Electromagnetic Counterparts of Gravitational-wave-detected Binary Black Hole Mergers

Unlike mergers of two compact objects containing a neutron star (NS), binary black hole (BBH) mergers are not accompanied by the production of tidally disrupted material and hence lack the most…

On the gamma-ray burst – gravitational wave association in GW150914

Abstract Hyperaccreting disks around black holes are the engines that drive outflows and jets in gamma ray bursts (GRBs). The torus formed after the core collapse or a compact binary merger is…

Electromagnetic counterparts to the gravitational wave event GW170817

The gravitational wave (GW) signal from a binary neutron star (NS) merger wasdetected by the LIGO/virgo detectors on August 17th 2017 for the first time.A short gamma-ray burst (GRB) and a kilonova…

ULTRAFAST OUTFLOWS FROM BLACK HOLE MERGERS WITH A MINIDISK

Recently, the direct detection of gravitational waves from black hole (BH) mergers was announced by the Advanced LIGO Collaboration. Multi-messenger counterparts of stellar-mass BH mergers are of…

Electromagnetic Signals Following Stellar-mass Black Hole Mergers

It is often assumed that gravitational-wave (GW) events resulting from the merger of stellar-mass black holes are unlikely to produce electromagnetic (EM) counterparts. We point out that the…

On the possible gamma-ray burst–gravitational wave association in GW150914

Possible role of magnetic reconnection in the electromagnetic counterpart of binary black hole merger

We propose a qualitative scenario to interpret the argued association between the direct measurement of the gravitational wave event GW150914 by Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory…

GW 150914-like black holes as Galactic high-energy sources

The first direct detections of gravitational waves (GWs) from black hole (BH) mergers, GW150914, GW151226 and LVT151012, give a robust lower limit $\sim 70000$ on the number of merged,…

Gravitational-wave localization alone can probe origin of stellar-mass black hole mergers

The results are the demonstration that the limited localization of gravitational waves, previously written off as not useful to distinguish progenitor channels, can in fact contribute key information, broadening the range of astrophysical questions probed by binary black hole observations.
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 42 REFERENCES

ASTROPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE BINARY BLACK HOLE MERGER GW150914

The discovery of the gravitational-wave (GW) source GW150914 with the Advanced LIGO detectors provides the first observational evidence for the existence of binary black hole (BH) systems that…

Determining the Hubble constant from gravitational wave observations of merging compact binaries

Recent observations have accumulated compelling evidence that some short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) are associated with the mergers of neutron star (NS) binaries. This would indicate that the SGRB…

Electromagnetic Counterparts of Gravitational Wave Sources : Mergers of Compact Objects

Mergers of compact objects are considered prime sources of gravitational waves (GW) and will soon be targets of GW observatories such as the Advanced-LIGO, VIRGO etc. Finding electromagnetic…

FERMI GBM OBSERVATIONS OF LIGO GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE EVENT GW150914

With an instantaneous view of 70% of the sky, the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) is an excellent partner in the search for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational-wave (GW) events. GBM…

Gamma-ray bursts from stellar mass accretion disks around black holes

A cosmological model for gamma-ray bursts is explored in which the radiation is produced as a broadly beamed pair fireball along the rotation axis of an accreting black hole. The black hole may be a…

Using Gravitational-Wave Standard Sirens

Gravitational waves (GWs) from supermassive binary black hole (BBH) in-spirals are potentially powerful standard sirens (the GW analog to standard candles; see work of B. Schutz). Because these…

JET LUMINOSITY OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS: THE BLANDFORD–ZNAJEK MECHANISM VERSUS THE NEUTRINO ANNIHILATION PROCESS

A neutrino-dominated accretion flow (NDAF) around a rotating stellar-mass black hole (BH) is one of the plausible candidates for the central engine of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Two mechanisms, i.e.,…

Collapsars: Gamma-Ray Bursts and Explosions in “Failed Supernovae”

Using a two-dimensional hydrodynamics code (PROMETHEUS), we explore the continued evolution of rotating helium stars, Mα ≳ 10 M☉, in which iron-core collapse does not produce a successful outgoing…

Pan-STARRS and PESSTO search for an optical counterpart to the LIGO gravitational-wave source GW150914

We searched for an optical counterpart to the first gravitational-wave source discovered by LIGO (GW150914), using a combination of the Pan-STARRS1 wide-field telescope and the Public ESO…

RADIATIVELY INEFFICIENT ACCRETION FLOWS INDUCED BY GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE EMISSION BEFORE MASSIVE BLACK HOLE COALESCENCE

We study an accretion flow during the gravitational-wave driven evolution of binary massive black holes. After the binary orbit decays due to an interaction with a massive circumbinary disk, the…