Early soft X-ray to UV emission from double neutron star mergers: implications from the long-term radio and X-ray emissions of GW 170817

TL;DR

This paper models the early soft X-ray to UV emission from neutron star mergers, linking it to the breakout of a cocoon from merger ejecta, and discusses its detectability as an early electromagnetic counterpart to gravitational waves.

Contribution

It proposes a new scenario for early X-ray/UV emission from neutron star mergers originating from cocoon breakout, with implications for early detection and localization.

Findings

Soft X-ray luminosity around 10^{45} erg/s lasting tens of seconds.

UV emission peaks hours after merger with luminosity ~10^{42} erg/s.

Early X-ray/UV signals can serve as initial electromagnetic counterparts.

Abstract

Recent long-term radio follow-up observations of GW 170817 reveals a simple power-law rising light curve, with a slope of $t^{0.78}$, up to 93 days after the merger. The latest X-ray detection at 109 days is also consistent with such a temporal slope. Such a shallow rise behavior requires a mildly relativistic outflow with a steep velocity gradient profile, so that slower material with larger energy catches up with the decelerating ejecta and re-energizes it. It has been suggested that this mildly relativistic outflow may represent a cocoon of material. We suggest that the velocity gradient profile may form during the stage that the cocoon is breaking out of the merger ejecta, resulted from shock propagation down a density gradient. The cooling of the hot relativistic cocoon material immediately after it breaks out should have produced soft X-ray to UV radiation at tens of seconds to hours after the merger. The soft X-ray emission has a luminosity of $L_{\rm X}\sim 10^{45}{\rm erg s^{-1}}$ over a period of tens of seconds for a merger event like GW 170817. The UV emission shows a rise initially and peaks at about a few hours with a luminosity of $L_{\rm UV}\sim 10^{42} {\rm erg s^{-1}}$. The soft X-ray transients could be detected by future wide-angle X-ray detectors, such as the Chinese mission Einstein Probe. This soft X-ray/UV emission would serve as one of the earliest electromagnetic counterparts of gravitation waves from double neutron star mergers and could provide the earliest localization of the sources.