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Constraints on the Physical Properties of GW190814 through Simulations based on DECam Follow-up Observations by the Dark Energy Survey

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arxiv 2006.07385 v2 pith:HSNO2NMH submitted 2020-06-12 astro-ph.HE astro-ph.IM

Constraints on the Physical Properties of GW190814 through Simulations based on DECam Follow-up Observations by the Dark Energy Survey

classification astro-ph.HE astro-ph.IM
keywords mergerobservationscounterpartdecamdetectedfollow-uplevelproperties
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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On 14 August 2019, the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations detected gravitational waves from a black hole and a 2.6 solar mass compact object, possibly the first neutron star -- black hole (NSBH) merger. In search of an optical counterpart, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) obtained deep imaging of the entire 90 percent confidence level localization area with Blanco/DECam 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, and 16 nights after the merger. Objects with varying brightness were detected by the DES Pipeline and we systematically reduced the candidate counterparts through catalog matching, light curve properties, host-galaxy photometric redshifts, SOAR spectroscopic follow-up observations, and machine-learning-based photometric classification. All candidates were rejected as counterparts to the merger. To quantify the sensitivity of our search, we applied our selection criteria to full light curve simulations of supernovae and kilonovae as they would appear in the DECam observations. Since the source class of the merger was uncertain, we utilized an agnostic, three-component kilonova model based on tidally-disrupted NS ejecta properties to quantify our detection efficiency of a counterpart if the merger included a NS. We find that if a kilonova occurred during this merger, configurations where the ejected matter is greater than 0.07 solar masses, has lanthanide abundance less than $10^{-8.56}$, and has a velocity between $0.18c$ and $0.21c$ are disfavored at the $2\sigma$ level. Furthermore, we estimate that our background reduction methods are capable of associating gravitational wave signals with a detected electromagnetic counterpart at the $4\sigma$ level in $95\%$ of future follow-up observations.

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Cited by 2 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M$_\odot$ Black Hole with a 2.6 M$_\odot$ Compact Object

    astro-ph.HE 2020-06 accept novelty 7.0

    Detection of GW190814 from the coalescence of a 23 solar-mass black hole and a 2.6 solar-mass compact object, the most unequal-mass binary yet observed with gravitational waves.

  2. Rapid data quality investigations of gravitational-wave events with the Data Quality Report Builder toolkit

    astro-ph.IM 2026-05 accept novelty 4.0

    DQRbuild toolkit automates data quality vetting for gravitational-wave events, recovering 96% of human-identified issues from O3 with a 24% false alarm rate.