Observational Constraints on Multimessenger Sources of Gravitational Waves and High-Energy Neutrinos

Imre Bartos, Chad Finley, Alessandra Corsi, and Szabolcs Márka

Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 251101 – Published 14 December 2011

Abstract

Many astronomical sources of intense bursts of photons are also predicted to be strong emitters of gravitational waves (GWs) and high-energy neutrinos (HENs). Moreover some suspected classes, e.g., choked gamma-ray bursts, may only be identifiable via nonphoton messengers. Here we explore the reach of current and planned experiments to address this question. We derive constraints on the rate of GW and HEN bursts based on independent observations by the initial LIGO and Virgo GW detectors and the partially completed IceCube (40-string) HEN detector. We then estimate the reach of joint $GW + HEN$ searches using advanced GW detectors and the completed ${km}^{3}$ IceCube detector to probe the joint parameter space. We show that searches undertaken by advanced detectors will be capable of detecting, constraining, or excluding, several existing models with 1 yr of observation.

Received 14 September 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.251101

Authors & Affiliations

Imre Bartos^1,*, Chad Finley², Alessandra Corsi³, and Szabolcs Márka^1,4

¹Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA
²Oskar Klein Centre & Department of Physics, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden
³LIGO Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
⁴Laboratoire AstroParticule et Cosmologie (APC) Université Paris Diderot, 75013 Paris, France