Skip to main content
New Announcement Feature, Code of Conduct, Circular Revisions. See news and announcements

GCN Circular 24646

Subject
LIGO/Virgo S190521g: Swift/BAT Counterpart Search
Date
2019-05-21T21:18:00Z (5 years ago)
From
Amy Lien at GSFC <amy.y.lien@nasa.gov>
S. D. Barthelmy (NASA/GSFC), A. Y. Lien (GSFC/UMBC),
D. M. Palmer (LANL), T. Sakamoto (AGU),
A. A. Breeveld (MSSL-UCL), A. P. Beardmore (U. Leicester),
D. N. Burrows (PSU), S. Campana (INAF-OAB), S. B. Cenko (NASA/GSFC),
G. Cusumano (INAF-IASF PA), A. D'Ai (INAF-IASFPA),
P. D'Avanzo (INAF-OAB), V. D'Elia(ASDC), S. Emery (UCL-MSSL),
P. A. Evans (U. Leicester), P. Giommi (ASI), C. Gronwall (PSU),
D. Hartmann (Clemson U.), J. A. Kennea (PSU), H. A. Krimm (NSF),
N. P. M. Kuin (UCL-MSSL), F. E. Marshall (NASA/GSFC),
A. Melandri (INAF-OAB), J. A. Nousek (PSU),
S. R. Oates (Uni. of Warwick), P. T. O'Brien (U. Leicester),
J. P. Osborne (U. Leicester), C. Pagani (U. Leicester),
K. L. Page (U.Leicester), M. Perri (ASDC),
J. L. Racusin (NASA/GSFC), B. Sbarufatti (INAF-OAB/PSU),
M. H. Siegel (PSU), G. Tagliaferri (INAF-OAB), A. Tohuvavohu (PSU),
E. Troja (NASA/GSFC/UMCP) report on behalf of the Swift team:

We report the search results in the BAT data within T0 +/- 100 s of the
LVC event S190521g (LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration GCN Circ. 24621),
where T0 is the LVC trigger time (2019-05-21T03:02:29.447 UTC).

The center of the BAT FOV at T0 is
RA = 169.185 deg,
DEC = 44.211 deg,
and the ROLL angle is 302.639 deg.
The BAT Field of View (>10% partial coding) covers 47.64% of the integrated
LVC localization probability, and 46.16% of the galaxy convolved
probability (Evans et al. 2016).

Within T0 +/- 100 s, no significant detections (signal-to-noise ratio
>~ 5 sigma) are found in the BAT raw light curves with time bins of 64 ms,
1 s, and 1.6 s. Assuming an on-axis (100% coded) short GRB with a typical
spectrum in the BAT energy range (i.e., a simple power-law model with a
power-law index of -1.32, Lien & Sakamoto et al. 2016), the 5-sigma upper
limit in the 1-s binned light curve corresponds to a flux upper
limit (15-350 keV) of ~ 7.04 x 10^-8 erg/s/cm^2.

Event data are available from T0-91.427 to T0-88.355. No significant
detections are found in the 15-350 keV image made using the whole event
data duration.

BAT retains decreased, but significant, sensitivity to rate increases for
gamma-ray events outside of its FOV. About 41.08% of the integrated LVC
localization probability was outside of the BAT FOV but above the
Earth's limb from Swift's location, and the corresponding flux upper limits
for this region are within roughly an order of magnitude higher than those
within the FOV.

The results of the BAT analysis are available at
https://swift.gsfc.nasa.gov/results/BATbursts/team_web/S190521g/web/source.html
Looking for U.S. government information and services? Visit USA.gov