GCN Circular 39201
Subject
LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S250207bg: Identification of a GW compact binary merger candidate
Date
2025-02-07T12:27:19Z (3 days ago)
From
Luise Kranzhoff at Maastricht University <luise.kranzhoff@ligo.org>
Via
Web form
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration report:
We identified the compact binary merger candidate S250207bg during real-time processing of data from LIGO Livingston Observatory (L1) and Virgo Observatory (V1) at 2025-02-07 11:56:45.258 UTC (GPS time: 1422964623.258). The candidate was found by the GstLAL [1] and SPIIR [2] analysis pipelines.
S250207bg is an event of interest because its false alarm rate, as estimated by the online analysis, is 4.9e-36 Hz, or about one in 1e28 years. The event's properties can be found at this URL:
https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S250207bg
After parameter estimation by RapidPE-RIFT [3], the classification of the GW signal, in order of descending probability, is BBH (>99%), NSBH (<1%), BNS (<1%), or Terrestrial (<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 <1%.
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 [5], distributed via GCN notice about 29 seconds after the candidate event time.
* bayestar.multiorder.fits,1, 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,1. For the bayestar.multiorder.fits,1 sky map, the 90% credible region is 110 deg2. Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 546 +/- 98 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] Chu et al. PRD 105, 024023 (2022) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.105.024023
[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