Search for Gravitational Waves Associated with Gamma-Ray Bursts Detected by Fermi and Swift During the LIGO-Virgo Run O3b

Abstract

We search for gravitational-wave signals associated with gamma-ray bursts detected by the Fermi and Swift satellites during the second half of the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (1 November 2019 15:00 UTC-27 March 2020 17:00 UTC). We conduct two independent searches: a generic gravitational-wave transients search to analyze 86 gamma-ray bursts and an analysis to target binary mergers with at least one neutron star as short gamma-ray burst progenitors for 17 events. We find no significant evidence for gravitational-wave signals associated with any of these gammaray bursts. A weighted binomial test of the combined results finds no evidence for sub-threshold gravitational wave signals associated with this GRB ensemble either. We use several source types and signal morphologies during the searches, resulting in lower bounds on the estimated distance to each gamma-ray burst. Finally, we constrain the population of low luminosity short gamma-ray bursts using results from the first to the third observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. The resulting population is in accordance with the local binary neutron star merger rate.

Prospects for multi-messenger detection of binary neutron star mergers in the fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run

“…These figures translate to a joint GW and EM detection rate that is ∼ 1 yr −1 for Fermi/GBM in the most favourable case (model A7) when we consider the most conservative scenario (case a, see Table 1). Although obtained under different assumptions, the expected rate of joint GW and GRB detection with Fermi/GBM is consistent with the estimate reported in (Abbott et al 2021b). Perspectives for a joint GW-EM detection for the prompt emission are more promising allowing for a lower SNR threshold and less interferometers for the GW detection (case b, see Table 2).…”

GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the Second Part of the Third Observing Run

“…Hence, in theory, GWTC-3 could contain a variety of source types. However, currently no high-significance (FAR < 10 −2 yr −1 ) candidate transients have been reported for sources other than standard, quasi-circular CBCs [24][25][26][27][28]. Therefore, we limit this GWTC-3 candidate list to the established source categories of BNSs, NSBHs and BBHs.…”

“…Further searches for GW transients in O3b data have been conducted focusing on: intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) binaries (with a component 65M and a final BH 100M ) [24], signals coincident with gammaray bursts [25], cosmic strings [26], and both minimally modeled short-duration ( O(1) s, such as from supernovae explosions) [27] and long-duration ( O(1) s, such as from deformed magnetars or from accretion-disk instabilities) [28] signals. However, no high-significance candidates for types of signals other than the CBCs reported here have yet been found.…”

First joint observation by the underground gravitational-wave detector, KAGRA, with GEO600

“…This analysis is called PyGRB [89,105], and forms part of the larger PyCBC analysis toolkit [114] with key components in the LALSuite library [115]. This approach has been used in many previous observing runs of the LIGO and Virgo detectors [38][39][40][41] and here we deploy a PyGRB analysis that is functionally identical to that used in the most recent LIGO-Virgo analyses [40,41],…”

“…Two of these scan all of the data for signals arriving from any direction at any time: a search for binary NS (BNS) coalescences [2,3,33,34], and a search for generic unmodeled short transients (bursts) [35][36][37]. The other two analyses are dedicated searches for binary coalescence signals and GW bursts associated with GRB events observed during the joint run [38][39][40][41]. No significant candidate GW events are identified, which is expected given the sensitivity of KAGRA at this early stage in its commissioning.…”