Using galaxy formation simulations to optimize LIGO follow-up observations

Publication Type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2017
Authors
Antolini
Elisa
Ilaria Caiazzo
Romeel Davé
Jeremy S. Heyl
Name of Publication
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume
466
Pagination
2212-2216
Date Published
April 1, 2017
ISBN Number
0035-8711
Keywords
gravitational waves; methods: observational; galaxies: distances and redshifts
Abstract

The recent discovery of gravitational radiation from merging black holesposes a challenge of how to organize the electromagnetic follow-up ofgravitational-wave events as well as observed bursts of neutrinos. Wepropose a technique to select the galaxies that are most likely to hostthe event given some assumptions of whether the particular event isassociated with recent star formation, low-metallicity stars or simplyproportional to the total stellar mass in the galaxy. We combine datafrom the 2-MASS Photometric Redshift Galaxy Catalogue with results fromgalaxy formation simulations to develop observing strategies thatpotentially reduce the area of sky to search by up to a factor of 2relative to an unweighted search of galaxies, and a factor of 20 to asearch over the entire LIGO localization region.