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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(871), p. 90, 2019

DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aaf726

arXiv, 2018

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1810.02764

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A Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor Search for Electromagnetic Signals Coincident with Gravitational-wave Candidates in Advanced LIGO's First Observing Run

Journal article published in 2019 by M. Dovale Álvarez, Andreas von Kienlin, C. F. da Silva Costa, M. de Laurentis, R. de Pietri, R. de Rosa, C. de Rossi, O. de Varona, N. van Bakel, C. van Den Broeck, M. van Beuzekom, J.~F.~J F. J. van den Brand, L. van der Schaaf, J. V. van Heijningen, A.~A A. van Veggel and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We present a search for prompt gamma-ray counterparts to compact binary coalescence gravitational wave (GW) candidates from Advanced LIGO's first observing run (O1). As demonstrated by the multimessenger observations of GW170817/GRB 170817A, electromagnetic and GW observations provide complementary information about the astrophysical source and, in the case of weaker candidates, may strengthen the case for an astrophysical origin. Here we investigate low-significance GW candidates from the O1 compact-binary coalescence searches using the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM), leveraging its all-sky and broad energy coverage. Candidates are ranked and compared to background to measure significance. Those with false alarm rates of less than 10^-5 Hz (about one per day) are used as the search sample for gamma-ray follow-up. No GW candidates were found to be coincident with gamma-ray transients independently identified by blind searches of the GBM data. In addition, GW candidate event times were followed up by a separate targeted search of GBM data. Among the resulting GBM events, the two with lowest false alarm rates were the gamma-ray transient GW150914-GBM presented in Connaughton et al. (2016) and a solar flare in chance coincidence with a GW candidate.