Artículos de revistas
A DARK ENERGY CAMERA SEARCH FOR MISSING SUPERGIANTS IN THE LMC AFTER THE ADVANCED LIGO GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE EVENT GW150914
Fecha
2016-06-01Registro en:
Astrophysical Journal Letters. Bristol: Iop Publishing Ltd, v. 823, n. 2, 6 p., 2016.
2041-8205
10.3847/2041-8205/823/2/L34
WOS:000377031700013
WOS000377031700013.pdf
Autor
Fermilab Natl Accelerator Lab
Harvard Smithsonian Ctr Astrophys
Univ Penn
Univ Chicago
Ohio Univ
Univ Illinois
STScI
Univ Southampton
Univ Arizona
Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp)
Natl Opt Astron Observ
UCL
Rhodes Univ
CNRS
Univ Paris 06
Carnegie Observ
Stanford Univ
SLAC Natl Accelerator Lab
Univ Portsmouth
Lab Interinst & Astron LIneA
Observ Nacl
IEEC CSIC
Barcelona Inst Sci & Technol
NASA
Univ Maryland
Excellence Cluster Universe
Univ Munich
CALTECH
Univ Michigan
Penn State Univ
Los Alamos Natl Lab
CIEMAT
Univ Calif Berkeley
Ohio State Univ
Australian Astron Observ
Texas A&M Univ
Universidade de São Paulo (USP)
Columbia Univ
Inst Catalana Recerca & Estudis Avancats
Max Planck Inst Extraterr Phys
Univ Sussex
Univ Fed Rio Grande do Sul
Brookhaven Natl Lab
Argonne Natl Lab
Institución
Resumen
The collapse of a stellar core is expected to produce gravitational waves (GWs), neutrinos, and in most cases a luminous supernova. Sometimes, however, the optical event could be significantly less luminous than a supernova and a direct collapse to a black hole, where the star just disappears, is possible. The GW event GW150914 was detected by the LIGO Virgo Collaboration via a burst analysis that gave localization contours enclosing the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Shortly thereafter, we used DECam to observe 102 deg(2) of the localization area, including 38 deg(2) on the LMC for a missing supergiant search. We construct a complete catalog of LMC luminous red supergiants, the best candidates to undergo invisible core collapse, and collected catalogs of other candidates: less luminous red supergiants, yellow supergiants, blue supergiants, luminous blue variable stars, and Wolf-Rayet stars. Of the objects in the imaging region, all are recovered in the images. The timescale for stellar disappearance is set by the free-fall time, which is a function of the stellar radius. Our observations at 4 and 13 days after the event result in a search sensitive to objects of up to about 200 solar radii. We conclude that it is unlikely that GW150914 was caused by the core collapse of a relatively compact supergiant in the LMC, consistent with the LIGO Collaboration analyses of the gravitational waveform as best interpreted as a high mass binary black hole merger. We discuss how to generalize this search for future very nearby core-collapse candidates.