Kilonova Luminosity Function Constraints based on Zwicky Transient Facility Searches for 13 Neutron Star Mergers
Creators: name: Kasliwal, Mansi M.
name: Anand, Shreya
name: Ahumada, Tomas
name: Stein, Robert
name: Carracedo, Ana Sagues
name: Andreoni, Igor
name: Coughlin, Michael W.
name: Singer, Leo P.
name: Kool, Erik C.
name: De, Kishalay
name: Kumar, Harsh
name: AlMualla, Mouza
name: Yao, Yuhan
name: Bulla, Mattia
name: Dobie, Dougal
name: Reusch, Simeon
name: Perley, Daniel A.
name: Cenko, S. Bradley
name: Bhalerao, Varun
name: Kaplan, David L.
name: Sollerman, Jesper
name: Goobar, Ariel
name: Copperwheat, Christopher M.
name: Bellm, Eric C.
name: Anupama, G. C.
name: Corsi, Alessandra
name: Nissanke, Samaya
name: Agudo, Ivan
name: Bagdasaryan, Ashot
name: Barway, Sudhanshu
name: Belicki, Justin
name: Bloom, Joshua S.
name: Bolin, Bryce
name: Buckley, David A. H.
name: Burdge, Kevin B.
name: Burruss, Rick
name: Caballero-Garcıa, Maria D.
name: Cannella, Chris
name: Castro-Tirado, Alberto J.
name: Cook, David O.
name: Cooke, Jeff
name: Cunningham, Virginia
name: Dahiwale, Aishwarya
name: Deshmukh, Kunal
name: Dichiara, Simone
name: Duev, Dmitry A.
name: Dutta, Anirban
name: Feeney, Michael
name: Franckowiak, Anna
name: Frederick, Sara
name: Fremling, Christoffer
name: Gal-Yam, Avishay
name: Gatkine, Pradip
name: Ghosh, Shaon
name: Goldstein, Daniel A.
name: Golkhou, V. Zach
name: Graham, Matthew J.
name: Graham, Melissa L.
name: Hankins, Matthew J.
name: Helou, George
name: Hu, Youdong
name: Ip, Wing-Huen
name: Jaodand, Amruta
name: Karambelkar, Viraj
name: Kong, Albert K. H.
name: Kowalski, Marek
name: Khandagale, Maitreya
name: Kulkarni, S. R.
name: Kumar, Brajesh
name: Laher, Russ R.
name: Li, K. L.
name: Mahabal, Ashish
name: Masci, Frank J.
name: Miller, Adam A.
name: Mogotsi, Moses
name: Mohite, Siddharth
name: Mooley, Kunal
name: Mroz, Przemek
name: Newman, Jeffrey A.
name: Ngeow, Chow-Choong
name: Oates, Samantha R.
name: Patil, Atharva Sunil
name: Pandey, Shashi B.
name: Pavana, M.
name: Pian, Elena
name: Riddle, Reed
name: Sanchez-Ramırez, Ruben
name: Sharma, Yashvi
name: Singh, Avinash
name: Smith, Roger
name: Soumagnac, Maayane T.
name: Taggart, Kirsty
name: Tan, Hanjie
name: Tzanidakis, Anastasios
name: Troja, Eleonora
name: Valeev, Azamat F.
name: Walters, Richard
name: Waratkar, Gaurav
name: Webb, Sara
name: Yu, Po-Chieh
name: Zhang, Bin-Bin
name: Zhou, Rongpu
name: Zolkower, Jeffry
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present a systematic search for optical counterparts to 13 gravitational wave (GW) triggers involving at least one neutron star during LIGO/Virgo's third observing run. We searched binary neutron star (BNS) and neutron star black hole (NSBH) merger localizations with the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and undertook follow-up with the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH) collaboration. The GW triggers had a median localization of 4480 deg^2, median distance of 267 Mpc and false alarm rates ranging from 1.5 to 1e-25 per yr. The ZTF coverage had a median enclosed probability of 39%, median depth of 20.8mag, and median response time of 1.5 hr. The O3 follow-up by the GROWTH team comprised 340 UVOIR photometric points, 64 OIR spectra, and 3 radio. We find no promising kilonova (radioactivity-powered counterpart) and we convert the upper limits to constrain the underlying kilonova luminosity function. Assuming that all kilonovae are at least as luminous as GW170817 at discovery (-16.1mag), we calculate our joint probability of detecting zero kilonovae is only 4.2%. If we assume that all kilonovae are brighter than -16.6mag (extrapolated peak magnitude of GW170817) and fade at 1 mag/day (similar to GW170817), the joint probability of zero detections is 7%. If we separate the NSBH and BNS populations, the joint probability of zero detections, assuming all kilonovae are brighter than -16.6mag, is 9.7% for NSBH and 7.9% for BNS mergers. Moreover, &lt;57% (&lt;89%) of putative kilonovae could be brighter than -16.6mag assuming flat (fading) evolution, at 90% confidence. If we further account for the online terrestrial probability for each GW trigger, we find that &lt;68% of putative kilonovae could be brighter than -16.6mag. Comparing to model grids, we find that some kilonovae must have Mej &lt; 0.03 Msun or Xlan&gt;1e-4 or phi&gt;30deg to be consistent with our limits. (Abridged)
description: Submitted to ApJ