GCN Circular 38402

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration report:

We identified the compact binary merger candidate S241201ac during real-time processing of data from LIGO Hanford Observatory (H1), LIGO Livingston Observatory (L1), and Virgo Observatory (V1) at 2024-12-01 05:57:58.628 UTC (GPS time: 1417067896.628). The candidate was found by the cWB BBH [1] and GstLAL [2] analysis pipelines.

S241201ac is an event of interest because its false alarm rate, as estimated by the online analysis, is 4.3e-08 Hz, or about one in 8 months. The event's properties can be found at this URL:

https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S241201ac

The classification of the GW signal, in order of descending probability, is BBH (97%), Terrestrial (3%), NSBH (<1%), or BNS (<1%).

Transient noise was present in the Virgo detector data at the time of the candidate, which may affect the parameters or the sky localization of the candidate.

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

Two 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 [4], distributed via GCN notice about 28 seconds after the candidate event time.
 * bayestar.multiorder.fits,1, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [4], distributed via GCN notice about 5 minutes after the candidate event time.

The preferred sky map at this time is bayestar.multiorder.fits,1. For the bayestar.multiorder.fits,1 sky map, the 90% credible region is 3425 deg2. Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 9495 +/- 2984 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] T. Mishra et al. PRD 105, 083018 (2022) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.105.083018
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 [2] Tsukada et al. PRD 108, 043004 (2023) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.108.043004
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 and Ewing et al. (2023) arXiv:2305.05625
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 [3] Chatterjee et al. ApJ 896, 54 (2020) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab8dbe
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 [4] Singer & Price PRD 93, 024013 (2016) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.93.024013
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