The evolution of the X-ray afterglow emission of GW 170817 / GRB 170817A in XMM-Newton observations

TL;DR

This study analyzes X-ray observations of GW 170817/GRB 170817A, revealing a light curve flattening and exploring models to explain the afterglow's geometry and dynamics, with implications for future gravitational wave associations.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed X-ray afterglow analysis of GW 170817, testing structured jet and isotropic fireball models against observational data.

Findings

Evidence for flattening of the X-ray light curve.

Both models fit the data and predict decreasing radio flux.

Optical-to-X-ray spectral slope remains unchanged.

Abstract

We report our observation of the short GRB 170817A, associated to the binary neutron star merger event GW 170817, perfomed in the X-ray band with XMM-Newton 135 d after the event (on the 29th December 2017). We find evidence for a flattening of the X-ray light curve with respect to the previously observed brightening. This is also supported by a nearly simultaneous optical Hubble Space Telescope and successive X-ray Chandra and low-frequency radio observations recently reported in the literature. Since the optical-to-X-ray spectral slope did not change with respect to previous observations, we exclude that the change in the temporal evolution of the light curve is due to the passage of the cooling frequency: its origin must be geometric or dynamical. We interpret all the existing afterglow data with two models: i) a structured jet and ii) a jet-less isotropic fireball with some stratification in its radial velocity structure. Both models fit the data and predict that the radio flux must decrease simultaneously with the optical and the X-ray one, making hard to distinguish between them at the present stage. Polarimetric measures and the rate of short GRB-GW association in future LIGO/Virgo runs will be key to disentangle these two geometrically different scenarios.