Galaxy Strategy for LIGO-Virgo Gravitational Wave Counterpart Searches

TL;DR

This paper presents a galaxy-based strategy to efficiently narrow down gravitational wave event localizations for telescopic follow-up, significantly reducing the number of required pointings and enabling rapid, targeted searches for optical and X-ray counterparts.

Contribution

It introduces a galaxy selection method that leverages bright galaxy counts and GW localizations to optimize follow-up observations for LIGO-Virgo gravitational wave events.

Findings

Reduces telescope pointings by 10 to 100 times compared to tiling entire error boxes.

Predicts the number of target galaxies for follow-up in different years (2015, 2017, 2020).

Enables small-field telescopes to participate effectively in GW counterpart searches.

Abstract

In this work we continue a line of inquiry begun in Kanner et al. which detailed a strategy for utilizing telescopes with narrow fields of view, such as the Swift X-ray Telescope (XRT), to localize gravity wave (GW) triggers from LIGO/Virgo. If one considers the brightest galaxies that produce ~50% of the light, then the number of galaxies inside typical GW error boxes will be several tens. We have found that this result applies both in the early years of Advanced LIGO when the range is small and the error boxes large, and in the later years when the error boxes will be small and the range large. This strategy has the beneficial property of reducing the number of telescope pointings by a factor 10 to 100 compared with tiling the entire error box. Additional galaxy count reduction will come from a GW rapid distance estimate which will restrict the radial slice in search volume. Combining the bright galaxy strategy with a convolution based on anticipated GW localizations, we find that the searches can be restricted to about 18+/-5 galaxies for 2015, about 23+/-4 for 2017, and about 11+/-2 for 2020. This assumes a distance localization at or near the putative NS-NS merger range for each target year, and these totals are integrated out to the range. Integrating out to the horizon would roughly double the totals. For nearer localizations the totals would decrease. The galaxy strategy we present in this work will enable numerous sensitive optical and X-ray telescopes with small fields of view to participate meaningfully in searches wherein the prospects for rapidly fading afterglow place a premium on a fast response time.