Electromagnetic emission from long-lived binary neutron star merger remnants II: lightcurves and spectra

TL;DR

This paper models electromagnetic signals from long-lived neutron star remnants after binary neutron star mergers, predicting lightcurves and spectra that match observations and could confirm the time-reversal scenario.

Contribution

It provides detailed predictions of EM signatures, including lightcurves and spectra, for long-lived neutron star merger remnants, supporting the time-reversal scenario.

Findings

X-ray lightcurves match Swift observations

Predicted precursor signals support the time-reversal scenario

Identified bright, isotropic X-ray transients as EM counterparts

Abstract

Recent observations indicate that in a large fraction of binary neutron star (BNS) mergers a long-lived neutron star (NS) may be formed rather than a black hole. Unambiguous electromagnetic (EM) signatures of such a scenario would strongly impact our knowledge on how short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) and their afterglow radiation are generated. Furthermore, such EM signals would have profound implications for multimessenger astronomy with joint EM and gravitational-wave (GW) observations of BNS mergers, which will soon become reality with the ground-based advanced LIGO/Virgo GW detector network starting its first science run this year. Here we explore such EM signatures based on the model presented in a companion paper, which provides a self-consistent evolution of the post-merger system and its EM emission starting from an early baryonic wind phase and resulting in a final pulsar wind nebula that is confined by the previously ejected material. Lightcurves and spectra are computed for a wide range of post-merger physical properties and particular attention is paid to the emission in the X-ray band. In the context of SGRB afterglow modeling, we present X-ray lightcurves corresponding to the 'standard' and the recently proposed 'time-reversal' scenario (SGRB prompt emission produced at the time of merger or at the time of collapse of the long-lived NS). The resulting afterglow lightcurve morphologies include, in particular, single and two-plateau features with timescales and luminosities that are in good agreement with the observations by the Swift satellite. Furthermore, we compute the X-ray signal that should precede the SGRB in the time-reversal scenario. If found, such a signal would represent smoking-gun evidence for this scenario. Finally, we find a bright, highly isotropic EM transient signal peaking in the X-ray band ...