Optimisation of the Swift X-ray follow-up of Advanced LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave triggers in 2015--16

Understand

One of the most exciting near-term prospects in physics is the potential discovery of gravitational waves by the advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors.

• To maximise both the confidence of the detection and the science return, it is essential to identify an electromagnetic counterpart.
• This is not trivial, as the events are expected to be poorly localised, particularly in the near-term, with error regions covering hundreds or even thousands of square degrees.
• In this paper we discuss the prospects for finding an X-ray counterpart to a gravitational wave trigger with the Swift X-ray Telescope, using the assumption that the trigger is caused by a binary neutron star merger which also produces a short gamma-ray burst.