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GCN Circular 36353

Subject
LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S240430ca: Identification of a GW compact binary merger candidate
Date
2024-04-30T10:45:07Z (5 months ago)
From
L. Conti at INFN - Padova <livia.conti@pd.infn.it>
Via
Web form
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration report:

We identified the compact binary merger candidate S240430ca during real-time processing of data from LIGO Hanford Observatory (H1) and LIGO Livingston Observatory (L1) at 2024-04-30 09:35:17.380 UTC (GPS time: 1398504935.380). The candidate was found by the CWB [1] and GstLAL [2] analysis pipelines.

S240430ca is an event of interest because its false alarm rate, as estimated by the online analysis, is 7.5e-08 Hz, or about one in 5 months. The event's properties can be found at this URL:

https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S240430ca

After parameter estimation by RapidPE-RIFT [3], the classification of the GW signal, in order of descending probability, is BBH (96%), Terrestrial (4%), NSBH (<1%), or BNS (<1%).

Assuming the candidate is astrophysical in origin, the probability that the lighter compact object is consistent with a neutron star mass (HasNS) is <1%. [4] Using the masses and spins inferred from the signal, the probability of matter outside the final compact object (HasRemnant) is <1%. [4] Both HasNS and HasRemnant consider the support of several neutron star equations of state. The probability that either of the binary components lies between 3 and 5 solar masses (HasMassGap) is 4%.

Three sky maps are available at this time and can be retrieved from the GraceDB event page:
 * bayestar.multiorder.fits,0, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [5], distributed via GCN notice about 25 seconds after the candidate event time.
 * bayestar.multiorder.fits,1, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [5], distributed via GCN notice about 34 seconds after the candidate event time.
 * bayestar.multiorder.fits,2, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [5], distributed via GCN notice about 5 minutes after the candidate event time.

The preferred sky map at this time is bayestar.multiorder.fits,2. For the bayestar.multiorder.fits,2 sky map, the 90% credible region is 5092 deg2. Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 8573 +/- 2920 Mpc (a posteriori mean +/- standard deviation).

For further information about analysis methodology and the contents of this alert, refer to the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA Public Alerts User Guide https://emfollow.docs.ligo.org/.

 [1] Klimenko et al. PRD 93, 042004 (2016) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.93.042004
 [2] Tsukada et al. PRD 108, 043004 (2023) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.108.043004 and Ewing et al. (2023) arXiv:2305.05625
 [3] Rose et al. (2022) arXiv:2201.05263 and Pankow et al. PRD 92, 023002 (2015) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.92.023002
 [4] Chatterjee et al. ApJ 896, 54 (2020) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab8dbe
 [5] Singer & Price PRD 93, 024013 (2016) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.93.024013

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