Radio afterglows of binary neutron star mergers: a population study for current and future gravitational wave observing runs

Understand

Following the historical observations of GW170817 and its multi-wavelength afterglow, more radio afterglows from neutron star mergers are expected in the future as counterparts to gravitational wave inspiral signals.

• We wish to describe these events using our current knowledge of the population of neutron star mergers coming from gamma-ray burst science, and taking into account the sensitivities of current and future gravitational wave and radio detectors.
• We combine analytical models for the merger gravitational wave and radio afterglow signals to a population model prescribing the energetics, circum-merger density and other relevant parameters of the mergers.
• We report the expected distributions of observables (distance, orientation, afterglow peak time/flux, etc.) from future events and study how these can be used to further probe the population of binary neutron stars, their mergers and related outflows during future observing campaigns.