Strategies for Finding Prompt Radio Counterparts to Gravitational Wave Transients with the Murchison Widefield Array

Abstract

We present and evaluate several strategies to search for prompt, low-frequency radio emission associated with gravitational wave transients using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). As we are able to repoint the MWA on timescales of tens of seconds, we can search for the dispersed radio signal that has been predicted to originate along with or shortly after a neutron star-neutron star merger. We find that given the large, 600 deg^2 instantaneous field-of-view of the MWA we can cover a significant fraction of the predicted gravitational wave error region, although due to the complicated geometry of the latter we only cover >50% of the error region for approximately 5% of events, and roughly 15% of events will be located <10 deg from the MWA pointing center such that they will be covered in the radio images. For optimal conditions our limiting flux density for a 10-s long transient would be 0.1 Jy, increasing to about 1 Jy for a wider range of events. This corresponds to luminosity limits of 1e38-1e39 erg/s based on expectations for the distances of the gravitational wave transients, which should be sufficient to detect or significantly constrain a range of models for prompt emission.

9 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in PASA

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• Constraining a neutron star merger origin for localized fast radio bursts
• A First Search for Prompt Radio Emission from a Gravitational-Wave Event
• Murchison Widefield Array rapid-response observations of the short GRB 180805A
• Early-time Searches for Coherent Radio Emission from Short GRBs with the Murchison Widefield Array
• The JAGWAR Prowls LIGO/Virgo O3 Paper I: Radio Search of a Possible Multi-Messenger Counterpart of the Binary Black Hole Merger Candidate S191216ap
• LOFAR 144-MHz follow-up observations of GW170817
• A VOEvent based automatic trigger system for the Murchison Widefield Array
• LOFAR detectability of prompt low-frequency radio emission during gamma-ray burst X-ray flares
• The capability of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder to detect prompt radio bursts from neutron star mergers
• Searching for Gravitational-Wave Counterparts using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite