GCN Circular 38666
Subject
LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S241225c: Identification of a GW compact binary merger candidate
Date
2024-12-25T05:02:17Z (7 days ago)
From
Sourabh Magare at Inter University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics <sourabh.magare@iucaa.in>
Via
Web form
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration report:
We identified the compact binary merger candidate S241225c during real-time processing of data from LIGO Livingston Observatory (L1) and Virgo Observatory (V1) at 2024-12-25 04:25:53.246 UTC (GPS time: 1419135971.246). The candidate was found by the GstLAL [1] analysis pipeline.
S241225c is an event of interest because its false alarm rate, as estimated by the online analysis, is 2e-15 Hz, or about one in 1e7 years. The event's properties can be found at this URL:
https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S241225c
The classification of the GW signal, in order of descending probability, is BBH (>99%), NSBH (<1%), Terrestrial (<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%. [2] Using the masses and spins inferred from the signal, the probability of matter outside the final compact object (HasRemnant) is <1%. [2] 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%.
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 [3], distributed via GCN notice about 26 seconds after the candidate event time.
* bayestar.multiorder.fits,1, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [3], 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 5489 deg2. Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 626 +/- 162 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] Tsukada et al. PRD 108, 043004 (2023) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.108.043004 and Ewing et al. (2023) arXiv:2305.05625
[2] Chatterjee et al. ApJ 896, 54 (2020) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab8dbe
[3] Singer & Price PRD 93, 024013 (2016) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.93.024013