Published July 10, 2008 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Implications for the origin of GRB 070201 from LIGO observations

Creators

Abstract

We analyzed the available LIGO data coincident with GRB 070201, a short-duration, hard-spectrum gamma-ray burst (GRB) whose electromagnetically determined sky position is coincident with the spiral arms of the Andromeda galaxy (M31). Possible progenitors of such short, hard GRBs include mergers of neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole, or soft gamma-ray repeater (SGR) flares. These events can be accompanied by gravitational-wave emission. No plausible gravitational-wave candidates were found within a 180s long window around the time of GRB 070201. This result implies that a compact binary progenitor of GRB 070201, with masses in the range 1M☉ < m1 < 3M☉ and 1M☉ < m2 < 40M☉, located in M31 is excluded at > 99% confidence. If the GRB 070201 progenitor was not in M31, then we can exclude a binary neutron star merger progenitor with distance D < 3.5 Mpc, assuming random inclination, at 90% confidence. The result also implies that an unmodeled gravitational-wave burst from GRB 070201 most probably emitted less than 4.4×10^(-4) M☉c^2 (7.9×10^50 ergs) in any 100 ms long period within the signal region if the source was in M31 and radiated isotropically at the same frequency as LIGO's peak sensitivity (f ≈ 150 Hz). This upper limit does not exclude current models of SGRs at the M31 distance.

Additional Information

© 2008. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2007 December 1; accepted 2008 January 6. We are indebted to the observers of the electromagnetic event, GCN and IPN, for providing us with valuable data and real-time information. We are grateful to Neil Gehrels of NASA/GSFC for his help in reviewing the article. We are grateful to the GALEX collaboration for providing the UV image of M31, the SDSS project for providing the optical image of M31, and Google Sky for accelerating the error box position verification.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
12747
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:ABBapj08

Funding

NSF
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Max Planck Society
State of Niedersachsen/Germany
Australian Research Council
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (India)
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)
Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (MEC)
Conselleria d'Economia,Hisenda i Innovació of the Govern de les Illes Balears
Scottish Universities Physics Alliance
Scottish Funding Council
NASA
Carnegie Trust
Leverhulme Trust
David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Research Corporation
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Dates

Created
2009-01-09
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2023-09-14
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
TAPIR , LIGO , Physics Department , Physics Department
Other Numbering System Name
LIGO Document
Other Numbering System Identifier
LIGO-P070081-B