Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

The expected diversity of afterglows from future neutron star merger events to be detected by LIGO/Virgo

Robert Mochkovitch
(Raphaël Duque, Frédéric Daigne)

Abstract:

Following the historical observations of GRB 170817A, new detections of neutron star mergers can be expected when LIGO/Virgo resume operation at the beginning of next year. These future events will be subject to three sources of diversity : (i) intrinsic, depending for example on the distribution of injected power and Lorentz factor in the ejecta; (ii) environmental, from the value of the external density; (iii) observational, being function of the viewing angle and distance. We discuss these various sources of diversity and present examples of light curves for a series of illustrative cases.