Abstract
A long-standing paradigm in astrophysics is that collisions—or mergers—of two neutron stars form highly relativistic and collimated outflows (jets) that power γ-ray bursts of short (less than two seconds) duration1,2,3. The observational support for this model, however, is only indirect4,5. A hitherto outstanding prediction is that gravitational-wave events from such mergers should be associated with γ-ray bursts, and that a majority of these bursts should be seen off-axis, that is, they should point away from Earth6,7. Here we report the discovery observations of the X-ray counterpart associated with the gravitational-wave event GW170817. Although the electromagnetic counterpart at optical and infrared frequencies is dominated by the radioactive glow (known as a ‘kilonova’) from freshly synthesized rapid neutron capture (r-process) material in the merger ejecta8,9,10, observations at X-ray and, later, radio frequencies are consistent with a short γ-ray burst viewed off-axis7,11. Our detection of X-ray emission at a location coincident with the kilonova transient provides the missing observational link between short γ-ray bursts and gravitational waves from neutron-star mergers, and gives independent confirmation of the collimated nature of the γ-ray-burst emission.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 71-74 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Nature |
Volume | 551 |
Early online date | 16 Oct 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2 Nov 2017 |
Keywords
- astro-ph.HE
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Hendrik Van Eerten
- Department of Physics - Reader
- Astrophysics - Head of Group
Person: Research & Teaching, Core staff
Equipment
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High Performance Computing (HPC) Facility
Chapman, S. (Manager)
University of BathFacility/equipment: Facility