A Search for Optical Emission from Binary Black Hole Merger GW170814 with the Dark Energy Camera
Creators
Abstract
Binary black hole (BBH) mergers found by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo detectors are of immense scientific interest to the astrophysics community, but are considered unlikely to be sources of electromagnetic emission. To test whether they have rapidly fading optical counterparts, we used the Dark Energy Camera to perform an i-band search for the BBH merger GW170814, the first gravitational wave (GW) detected by three interferometers. The 87 deg^2 localization region (at 90% confidence) centered in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) footprint enabled us to image 86% of the probable sky area to a depth of i ~ 23 mag and provide the most comprehensive data set to search for electromagnetic (EM) emission from BBH mergers. To identify candidates, we perform difference imaging with our search images and with templates from pre-existing Dark Energy Survey (DES) images. The analysis strategy and selection requirements were designed to remove supernovae and to identify transients that decline in the first two epochs. We find two candidates, each of which is spatially coincident with a star or a high-redshift galaxy in the DES catalogs, and they are thus unlikely to be associated with GW170814. Our search finds no candidates associated with GW170814, disfavoring rapidly declining optical emission from BBH mergers brighter than i ~ 23 mag (L_(optical) ~ 5 × 10^(41) erg s^(−1)) 1–2 days after coalescence. In terms of GW sky map coverage, this is the most complete search for optical counterparts to BBH mergers to date.
Additional Information
© 2019 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2018 December 3; revised 2019 February 15; accepted 2019 February 19; published 2019 March 15. Z.D. would like to thank Reed Essick for useful discussions and would also like to thank the Dark Cosmology Center and Neils Bohr Institute, where he was studying at the time of the GW170814 alert. Z.D. is supported by NSF Graduate Research Fellowship grant DGE-1144082. Z.D. and D.E.H. were partially supported by NSF CAREER grant PHY1151836 and NSF grant PHY-1708081. H.-Y.C. was supported by the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, through a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. R.J.F. is supported in part by NASA grant NNG17PX03C, NSF grant AST-1518052, the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and by a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. This work was completed in part with resources provided by the University of Chicago Research Computing Center and support from the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago through NSF grant PHY-1125897 and an endowment from the Kavli Foundation. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the DOE and NSF (USA), MEC/MICINN/MINECO (Spain), STFC (UK), HEFCE (UK). NCSA (UIUC), KICP (U. Chicago), CCAPP (Ohio State), MIFPA (Texas A&M), CNPQ, FAPERJ, FINEP (Brazil), DFG (Germany), and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The Collaborating Institutions are Argonne Lab, UC Santa Cruz, University of Cambridge, CIEMAT-Madrid, University of Chicago, University College London, DES-Brazil Consortium, University of Edinburgh, ETH Zürich, Fermilab, University of Illinois, ICE (IEEC-CSIC), IFAE Barcelona, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, LMU München and the associated Excellence Cluster universe, University of Michigan, NOAO, University of Nottingham, Ohio State University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Lab, Stanford University, University of Sussex, Texas A&M University, and the OzDES Membership Consortium. Based in part on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The DES Data Management System is supported by the NSF under grant No. AST-1138766 and AST-1536171. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MINECO under grants AYA2015-71825, ESP2015-66861, FPA2015-68048, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IFAE is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013) including ERC grant agreements 240672, 291329, and 306478. We acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), through project number CE110001020, and the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) e-Universe (CNPq grant 465376/2014-2). This manuscript has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics.Attached Files
Published - Doctor_2019_ApJL_873_L24.pdf
Submitted - 1812.01579.pdf
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1812.01579.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 93869
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190315-124509857
Related works
- Describes
- https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.01579 (URL)
Funding
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
- DGE-1144082
- NSF
- PHY-1151836
- NSF
- PHY-1708081
- Harvard University
- John Templeton Foundation
- NASA
- NNG17PX03C
- NSF
- AST-1518052
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Heising-Simons Foundation
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- NSF
- PHY-1125897
- Kavli Foundation
- Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (MEC)
- Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCINN)
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- Higher Education Funding Council for England
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- University of Chicago
- Ohio State University
- Texas A&M University
- Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ)
- Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
- Argonne National Laboratory
- University of California Santa Cruz
- University of Cambridge
- Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas
- University College London
- DES-Brazil Consortium
- University of Edinburgh
- ETH Zürich
- Fermilab
- University of Illinois
- Institute of Space Sciences (Spain)
- Institut de Fisica d'Altes Energies
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
- University of Michigan
- National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO)
- University of Nottingham
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of Portsmouth
- Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
- Stanford University
- University of Sussex
- OzDES Membership Consortium
- Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)
- NSF
- AST-1138766
- NSF
- AST-1536171
- Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO)
- AYA2015-71825
- Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO)
- ESP2015-66861
- Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO)
- FPA2015-68048
- Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa
- SEV-2016-0588
- Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa
- SEV-2016-0597
- Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigación Científica y Técnica de Excelencia María de Maeztu
- MDM-2015-0509
- European Regional Development Fund
- Generalitat de Catalunya
- European Research Council (ERC)
- 240672
- European Research Council (ERC)
- 291329
- European Research Council (ERC)
- 306478
- Australian Research Council
- CE110001020
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)
- 465376/2014-2
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-AC02-07CH11359
Dates
- Created
-
2019-03-15Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field