Kilpatrick, Charles D. and Coulter, David A. and Arcavi, Iair and Brink, Thomas G. and Dimitriadis, Georgios and Filippenko, Alexei V. and Foley, Ryan J. and Howell, D. Andrew and Jones, David O. and Kasen, Daniel and Makler, Martin and Piro, Anthony L. and Rojas-Bravo, César and Sand, David J. and Swift, Jonathan J. and Tucker, Douglas and Zheng, WeiKang and Allam, Sahar S. and Annis, James T. and Antilen, Juanita and Bachmann, Tristan G. and Bloom, Joshua S. and Bom, Clecio R. and Bostroem, K. Azalee and Brout, Dillon and Burke, Jamison and Butler, Robert E. and Butner, Melissa and Campillay, Abdo and Clever, Karoli E. and Conselice, Christopher J. and Cooke, Jeff and Dage, Kristen C. and de Carvalho, Reinaldo R. and de Jaeger, Thomas and Desai, Shantanu and Garcia, Alyssa and Garcia-Bellido, Juan and Gill, Mandeep S. S. and Girish, Nachiket and Hallakoun, Na’ama and Herner, Kenneth and Hiramatsu, Daichi and Holz, Daniel E. and Huber, Grace and Kawash, Adam M. and McCully, Curtis and Medallon, Sophia A. and Metzger, Brian D. and Modak, Shaunak and Morgan, Robert and Muñoz, Ricardo R. and Muñoz-Elgueta, Nahir and Murakami, Yukei S. and Felipe, Olivares E. and Palmese, Antonella and Patra, Kishore C. and Pereira, Maria E. S. and Pessi, Thallis L. and Pineda-Garcia, J. and Quirola-Vásquez, Jonathan and Ramirez-Ruiz, Enrico and Rembold, Sandro Barboza and Rest, Armin and Rodríguez, Ósmar and Santana-Silva, Luidhy and Sherman, Nora F. and Siebert, Matthew R. and Smith, Carli and Smith, J. Allyn and Soares-Santos, Marcelle and Stacey, Holland and Stahl, Benjamin E. and Strader, Jay and Strasburger, Erika and Sunseri, James and Tinyanont, Samaporn and Tucker, Brad E. and Ulloa, Natalie and Valenti, Stefano and Vasylyev, Sergiy S. and Wiesner, Matthew P. and Zhang, Keto D. (2021) The Gravity Collective: A Search for the Electromagnetic Counterpart to the Neutron Star–Black Hole Merger GW190814. The Astrophysical Journal, 923 (2): 258. ISSN 0004-637X
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
We present optical follow-up imaging obtained with the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Nickel Telescope, Swope Telescope, and Thacher Telescope of the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave (GW) signal from the neutron star-black hole (NSBH) merger GW190814. We searched the GW190814 localization region (19 deg2 for the 90th percentile best localization), covering a total of 51 deg2 and 94.6% of the two-dimensional localization region. Analyzing the properties of 189 transients that we consider as candidate counterparts to the NSBH merger, including their localizations, discovery times from merger, optical spectra, likely host galaxy redshifts, and photometric evolution, we conclude that none of these objects are likely to be associated with GW190814. Based on this finding, we consider the likely optical properties of an electromagnetic counterpart to GW190814, including possible kilonovae and short gamma-ray burst afterglows. Using the joint limits from our follow-up imaging, we conclude that a counterpart with an r-band decline rate of 0.68 mag day-1, similar to the kilonova AT 2017gfo, could peak at an absolute magnitude of at most -17.8 mag (50% confidence). Our data are not constraining for "red"kilonovae and rule out "blue"kilonovae with M > 0.5 M o˙ (30% confidence). We strongly rule out all known types of short gamma-ray burst afterglows with viewing angles <17° assuming an initial jet opening angle of ∼5.°2 and explosion energies and circumburst densities similar to afterglows explored in the literature. Finally, we explore the possibility that GW190814 merged in the disk of an active galactic nucleus, of which we find four in the localization region, but we do not find any candidate counterparts among these sources.