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GW170817: observation of gravitational waves from a binary neutron star inspiral

B. P. Abbott, +1134 more
- 16 Oct 2017 - 
- Vol. 119, Iss: 16, pp 161101-161101
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TLDR
The association of GRB 170817A, detected by Fermi-GBM 1.7 s after the coalescence, corroborates the hypothesis of a neutron star merger and provides the first direct evidence of a link between these mergers and short γ-ray bursts.
Abstract
On August 17, 2017 at 12∶41:04 UTC the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors made their first observation of a binary neutron star inspiral. The signal, GW170817, was detected with a combined signal-to-noise ratio of 32.4 and a false-alarm-rate estimate of less than one per 8.0×10^{4}  years. We infer the component masses of the binary to be between 0.86 and 2.26  M_{⊙}, in agreement with masses of known neutron stars. Restricting the component spins to the range inferred in binary neutron stars, we find the component masses to be in the range 1.17-1.60  M_{⊙}, with the total mass of the system 2.74_{-0.01}^{+0.04}M_{⊙}. The source was localized within a sky region of 28  deg^{2} (90% probability) and had a luminosity distance of 40_{-14}^{+8}  Mpc, the closest and most precisely localized gravitational-wave signal yet. The association with the γ-ray burst GRB 170817A, detected by Fermi-GBM 1.7 s after the coalescence, corroborates the hypothesis of a neutron star merger and provides the first direct evidence of a link between these mergers and short γ-ray bursts. Subsequent identification of transient counterparts across the electromagnetic spectrum in the same location further supports the interpretation of this event as a neutron star merger. This unprecedented joint gravitational and electromagnetic observation provides insight into astrophysics, dense matter, gravitation, and cosmology.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Evidence for a maximum mass cut-off in the neutron star mass distribution and constraints on the equation of state

TL;DR: In this paper, the mass distribution of neutron stars in binary systems using a flexible Gaussian mixture model and use Bayesian model selection to explore evidence for multi-modality and a sharp cut-off in the mass distributions.
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The THESEUS space mission concept: science case, design and expected performances

Lorenzo Amati, +226 more
TL;DR: Theseus as mentioned in this paper is a space mission concept aimed at exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts for investigating the early Universe and at providing a substantial advancement of multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics.
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Enriching the Symphony of Gravitational Waves from Binary Black Holes by Tuning Higher Harmonics

TL;DR: In this article, an inspiral-merger-ringdown waveform model was proposed for spin-precessional effects in the effective-one-body formalism for spinning, nonprecessing binary black holes that includes gravitational modes beyond the dominant (2,2) mode, specifically the (1), (3,3), (4,4), (5,5) mode.
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Stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds.

TL;DR: A review of the current state of research on the stochastic background of the early universe can be found in this paper, where the authors summarize the sources of these gravitational waves and methods used to observe them.
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Peter A. R. Ade, +337 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a cosmological analysis based on full-mission Planck observations of temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation.
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Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters

Peter A. R. Ade, +260 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present results based on full-mission Planck observations of temperature and polarization anisotropies of the CMB, which are consistent with the six-parameter inflationary LCDM cosmology.
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Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

B. P. Abbott, +1011 more
TL;DR: This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger, and these observations demonstrate the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems.
Journal Article

The Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

TL;DR: The first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger were reported in this paper, with a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203,000 years, equivalent to a significance greater than 5.1σ.
Journal ArticleDOI

GW151226: observation of gravitational waves from a 22-solar-mass binary black hole coalescence

B. P. Abbott, +973 more
TL;DR: This second gravitational-wave observation provides improved constraints on stellar populations and on deviations from general relativity.
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