GCN Circular 39898
Subject
LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S250328ae: Identification of a GW compact binary merger candidate
Date
2025-03-28T06:27:04Z (4 days ago)
From
Sayantan Ghosh at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay <stanghosh@iitb.ac.in>
Via
Web form
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration report:
We identified the compact binary merger candidate S250328ae during real-time processing of data from LIGO Hanford Observatory (H1), LIGO Livingston Observatory (L1), and Virgo Observatory (V1) at 2025-03-28 05:40:27.419 UTC (GPS time: 1427175645.419). The candidate was found by the cWB [1], cWB BBH [2], GstLAL [3], MBTA [4], MLy [5], PyCBC Live [6], and SPIIR [7] analysis pipelines.
S250328ae is an event of interest because its false alarm rate, as estimated by the online analysis, is 3.2e-10 Hz, or about one in 1e2 years. The event's properties can be found at this URL:
https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S250328ae
After parameter estimation by RapidPE-RIFT [8], 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 at least one of the compact objects is consistent with a neutron star mass (HasNS) is <1%. [9] Using the masses and spins inferred from the signal, the probability of matter outside the final compact object (HasRemnant) is <1%. [9] 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 7%.
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 [10], distributed via GCN notice about 32 seconds after the candidate event time.
* bayestar.multiorder.fits,1, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [10], 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 well fit by an ellipse with an area of 22 deg2 described by the following DS9 region (right ascension, declination, semi-major axis, semi-minor axis, position angle of the semi-minor axis):
icrs; ellipse(09h39m, +10d34m, 7.42d, 0.95d, 115.70d)
Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 492 +/- 91 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] T. Mishra et al. PRD 105, 083018 (2022) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.105.083018
[3] Tsukada et al. PRD 108, 043004 (2023) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.108.043004 and Ewing et al. PRD 109, 042008 (2024) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.109.042008
[4] Aubin et al. CQG 38, 095004 (2021) doi:10.1088/1361-6382/abe913
[5] Skliris et al. (2020) arXiv:2009.14611
[6] Dal Canton et al. ApJ 923, 254 (2021) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac2f9a
[7] Chu et al. PRD 105, 024023 (2022) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.105.024023
[8] Rose et al. (2022) arXiv:2201.05263 and Pankow et al. PRD 92, 023002 (2015) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.92.023002
[9] Chatterjee et al. ApJ 896, 54 (2020) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab8dbe
[10] Singer & Price PRD 93, 024013 (2016) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.93.024013