The Gravity Collective: A Search for the Electromagnetic Counterpart to the Neutron Star-Black Hole Merger GW190814
Creators: name: Kilpatrick, Charles D.
name: Coulter, David A.
name: Arcavi, Iair
name: Brink, Thomas G.
name: Dimitriadis, Georgios
name: Filippenko, Alexei V.
name: Foley, Ryan J.
name: Howell, D. Andrew
name: Jones, David O.
name: Makler, Martin
name: Piro, Anthony L.
name: Rojas-Bravo, César
name: Sand, David J.
name: Swift, Jonathan J.
name: Tucker, Douglas
name: Zheng, WeiKang
name: Allam, Sahar S.
name: Annis, James T.
name: Antilen, Juanita
name: Bachmann, Tristan G.
name: Bloom, Joshua S.
name: Bom, Clecio R.
name: Bostroem, K. Azalee
name: Brout, Dillon
name: Burke, Jamison
name: Butler, Robert E.
name: Butner, Melissa
name: Campillay, Abdo
name: Clever, Karoli E.
name: Conselice, Christopher J.
name: Cooke, Jeff
name: Dage, Kristen C.
name: de Carvalho, Reinaldo R.
name: de Jaeger, Thomas
name: Desai, Shantanu
name: Garcia, Alyssa
name: Garcia-Bellido, Juan
name: Gill, Mandeep S. S.
name: Girish, Nachiket
name: Hallakoun, Na'ama
name: Herner, Kenneth
name: Hiramatsu, Daichi
name: Holz, Daniel E.
name: Huber, Grace
name: Kawash, Adam M.
name: McCully, Curtis
name: Medallon, Sophia A.
name: Metzger, Brian D.
name: Modak, Shaunak
name: Morgan, Robert
name: Muñoz, Ricardo R.
name: Muñoz-Elgueta, Nahir
name: Murakami, Yukei S.
name: E., Felipe Olivares
name: Palmese, Antonella
name: Patra, Kishore
name: Pereira, Maria E. S.
name: Pessi, Thallis L.
name: Pineda-Garcia, J.
name: Quirola-Vásquez, Jonathan
name: Ramirez-Ruiz, Enrico
name: Rembold, Sandro Barboza
name: Rest, Armin
name: Rodríguez, Ósmar
name: Santana-Silva, Luidhy
name: Sherman, Nora F.
name: Siebert, Matthew R.
name: Smith, Carli
name: Smith, J. Allyn
name: Soares-Santos, Marcelle
name: Stacey, Holland
name: Stahl, Benjamin E.
name: Strader, Jay
name: Strasburger, Erika
name: Sunseri, James
name: Tinyanont, Samaporn
name: Tucker, Brad E.
name: Ulloa, Natalie
name: Valenti, Stefano
name: Vasylyev, Sergiy
name: Wiesner, Matthew P.
name: Zhang, Keto D.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present optical follow-up imaging obtained with the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Nickel Telescope, Swope Telescope, and Thacher Telescope of the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave (GW) signal from the neutron star-black hole (NSBH) merger GW190814. We searched the GW190814 localization region (19 deg$^{2}$ for the 90th percentile best localization), covering a total of 51 deg$^{2}$ and 94.6% of the two-dimensional localization region. Analyzing the properties of 189 transients that we consider as candidate counterparts to the NSBH merger, including their localizations, discovery times from merger, optical spectra, likely host-galaxy redshifts, and photometric evolution, we conclude that none of these objects are likely to be associated with GW190814. Based on this finding, we consider the likely optical properties of an electromagnetic counterpart to GW190814, including possible kilonovae and short gamma-ray burst afterglows. Using the joint limits from our follow-up imaging, we conclude that a counterpart with an $r$-band decline rate of 0.68 mag day$^{-1}$, similar to the kilonova AT 2017gfo, could peak at an absolute magnitude of at most $-17.8$ mag (50% confidence). Our data are not constraining for ''red'' kilonovae and rule out ''blue'' kilonovae with $M&gt;0.5 M_{\odot}$ (30% confidence). We strongly rule out all known types of short gamma-ray burst afterglows with viewing angles $
description: 86 pages, 9 figures