Toward finding gravitational-wave signals from progenitors of short hard gamma-ray bursts and orphaned afterglows

Abstract

With multiple observatories and missions being planned for detecting orphaned afterglows associated with gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) we emphasize the importance of developing data analysis strategies for searching their possible counterpart signals in the data of gravitational wave (GW) detectors in the advanced detector era. This is especially attractive since short hard gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) may have compact binary coalescences involving neutron stars (CBCNSs) as their progenitors, which emit gravitational waves. Joint electromagnetic (EM) and GW observations of these objects will enrich our understanding of their beaming, energetics, galactic environment, and shed light on a host of other outstanding questions related to them. Here we recognize some of the astrophysical factors that determine what fraction of CBCNS sources can generate orphaned afterglows. Pipelines already exist that target the sky-position and time of occurrence of SGRBs, known from EM observations, to search for their counterparts in GW detector data. Modifying them to analyze extended periods of time in the GW data in the past of the afterglow detection, while targeting a single sky-position, can search for GWs from the common progenitor. We assess the improvement in GW detectability to be had from utilizing the sky-position information. We also propose a method for improving the detection efficiency of targeted searches of GW signals from the putative CBCNS sources of afterglows and short gamma ray bursts in the presence of errors in detector calibration or CBCNS waveform models used in the search. The improvement arises from searching in a wider patch of the sky even when the sky-position is known accurately from EM observations and utilizes the covariance of the errors in waveform parameters with those in the sky position.