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arXiv · 2306.04373

Deep Multimessenger Search for Compact Binary Mergers in LIGO, Virgo, and Fermi/GBM Data from 2016-2017

M. Pillas·T. Dal Canton·C. Stachie·B. Piotrzkowski·F. Hayes·R. Hamburg·E. Burns·J. Wood·P. A. Duverne·N. Christensen
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Abstract

GW170817-GRB 170817A provided the first observation of gravitational waves from a neutron star merger with associated transient counterparts across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. This discovery demonstrated the long-hypothesized association between short gamma-ray bursts and neutron star mergers. More joint detections are needed to explore the relation between the parameters inferred from the gravitational wave and the properties of the gamma-ray burst signal. We developed a joint multimessenger analysis of LIGO, Virgo, and Fermi/GBM data designed for detecting weak gravitational-wave transients associated with weak gamma-ray bursts. As such, it does not start from confident (GWTC-1) events only. Instead, we take the full list of existing compact binary coalescence triggers generated with the PyCBC pipeline from the second Gravitational-Wave Observing Run (O2), and reanalyze the entire set of public Fermi/GBM data covering this observing run to generate a corresponding set of gamma-ray burst candidate triggers. We then search for coincidences between the gravitational-wave and gamma-ray burst triggers without requiring a confident detection in any channel. The candidate coincidences are ranked according to a statistic combining each candidate's strength in gravitational-wave and gamma-ray data, their time proximity, and the overlap of their sky localization. The ranking is then converted to a false alarm rate using time shifts between the gravitational-wave and gamma-ray burst triggers. We present the results using O2 triggers, which allowed us to check the validity of our method against GW170817-GRB 170817A. We also discuss the different configurations tested to maximize the significance of the joint detection.

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M. Pillas, T. Dal Canton, C. Stachie, B. Piotrzkowski, F. Hayes, R. Hamburg, E. Burns, J. Wood, P. A. Duverne, N. Christensen. 2023-06-07. Deep Multimessenger Search for Compact Binary Mergers in LIGO, Virgo, and Fermi/GBM Data from 2016-2017. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357%2Facf458

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