Capability of detecting ultraviolet counterparts of gravitational waves with GLUV

Abstract

With the discovery of gravitational waves (GWs), attention has turned towards detecting counterparts to these sources. In discussions on counterpart signatures and multimessenger follow-up strategies to the GW detections, ultraviolet (UV) signatures have largely been neglected, due to UV facilities being limited to SWIFT, which lacks high-cadence UV survey capabilities. In this paper, we examine the UV signatures from merger models for the major GW sources, highlighting the need for further modelling, while presenting requirements and a design for an effective UV survey telescope. Using the u'-band models as an analogue, we find that a UV survey telescope requires a limiting magnitude of mu'(AB) ≈ 24 to fully complement the aLIGO range and sky localization.We show that a network of small, balloonbased UV telescopes with a primary mirror diameter of 30 cm could be capable of covering the aLIGO detection distance from ~60 to 100 per cent for BNS events and ~40 per cent for the black hole and a neutron star events. The sensitivity of UV emission to initial conditions suggests that a UV survey telescope would provide a unique data set, which can act as an effective diagnostic to discriminate between models. Show more