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  • The Optical Afterglow of GW...
    Fong, W.; Blanchard, P. K.; Alexander, K. D.; Strader, J.; Margutti, R.; Hajela, A.; Villar, V. A.; Wu, Y.; Ye, C. S.; Berger, E.; Chornock, R.; Coppejans, D.; Cowperthwaite, P. S.; Eftekhari, T.; Giannios, D.; Guidorzi, C.; Kathirgamaraju, A.; Laskar, T.; Macfadyen, A.; Metzger, B. D.; Nicholl, M.; Paterson, K.; Terreran, G.; Sand, D. J.; Sironi, L.; Williams, P. K. G.; Xie, X.; Zrake, J.

    Astrophysical journal. Letters, 09/2019, Letnik: 883, Številka: 1
    Journal Article

    We present a revised and complete optical afterglow light curve of the binary neutron star merger GW170817, enabled by deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) F606W observations at 584 days post-merger, which provide a robust optical template. The light curve spans 110-362 days, and is fully consistent with emission from a relativistic structured jet viewed off-axis, as previously indicated by radio and X-ray data. Combined with contemporaneous radio and X-ray observations, we find no spectral evolution, with a weighted average spectral index of 〈 β 〉 = − 0.583 0.013 , demonstrating that no synchrotron break frequencies evolve between the radio and X-ray bands over these timescales. We find that an extrapolation of the post-peak temporal slope of GW170817 to the luminosities of cosmological short gamma-ray bursts matches their observed jet break times, suggesting that their explosion properties are similar, and that the primary difference in GW170817 is viewing angle. Additionally, we place a deep limit on the luminosity and mass of an underlying globular cluster (GC) of L 6.7 × 103 L , or M 1.3 × 104 M , at least 4 standard deviations below the peak of the GC mass function of the host galaxy, NGC 4993. This limit provides a direct and strong constraint that GW170817 did not form and merge in a GC. As highlighted here, HST (and soon the James Webb Space Telescope) enables critical observations of the optical emission from neutron star merger jets and outflows.