Predicting electromagnetic counterparts using low-latency, gravitational-wave data products

Understand

Searches for gravitational-wave counterparts have been going in earnest since GW170817 and the discovery of AT2017gfo.

• Since then, the lack of detection of other optical counterparts connected to binary neutron star or black hole - neutron star candidates has highlighted the need for a better discrimination criterion to support this effort.
• At the moment, the low-latency gravitational-wave alerts contain preliminary information about the binary properties and, hence, on whether a detected binary might have an electromagnetic counterpart.
• The current alert method is a classifier that estimates the probability that there is a debris disc outside the black hole created during the merger as well as the probability of a signal being a binary neutron star, a black hole - neutron star, a binary black hole or of terrestrial origin.