GCN Circular 38971
Subject
LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S250118t: Identification of a GW compact binary merger candidate
Date
2025-01-18T03:12:05Z (4 days ago)
From
Lijing Shao at Peking University <lshao@pku.edu.cn>
Via
Web form
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration report:
We identified the compact binary merger candidate S250118t during real-time processing of data from LIGO Hanford Observatory (H1), LIGO Livingston Observatory (L1), and Virgo Observatory (V1) at 2025-01-18 02:32:25.941 UTC (GPS time: 1421202763.941). The candidate was found by the CWB-BBH [1], GstLAL [2], MBTA [3], and PyCBC Live [4] analysis pipelines.
S250118t is an event of interest because its false alarm rate, as estimated by the online analysis, is 4e-10 Hz, or about one in 79 years. The event's properties can be found at this URL:
https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S250118t
The classification of the GW signal, in order of descending probability, is BBH (>99%), Terrestrial (<1%), 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%. [5] Using the masses and spins inferred from the signal, the probability of matter outside the final compact object (HasRemnant) is <1%. [5] 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 [6], distributed via GCN notice about 27 seconds after the candidate event time.
* bayestar.multiorder.fits,1, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [6], distributed via GCN notice about 31 seconds after the candidate event time.
* bayestar.multiorder.fits,2, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [6], 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 2393 deg2. Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 8129 +/- 2357 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
[2] Tsukada et al. PRD 108, 043004 (2023) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.108.043004 and Ewing et al. (2023) arXiv:2305.05625
[3] Aubin et al. CQG 38, 095004 (2021) doi:10.1088/1361-6382/abe913
[4] Dal Canton et al. ApJ 923, 254 (2021) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac2f9a
[5] Chatterjee et al. ApJ 896, 54 (2020) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab8dbe
[6] Singer & Price PRD 93, 024013 (2016) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.93.024013