Physics Commons^™

Monsters In The Dark: High Energy Signatures Of Black Hole Formation With Multimessenger Astronomy, Alexander L. Urban

Theses and Dissertations

When two compact objects inspiral and violently merge it is a rare cosmic event, producing fantastically “luminous” gravitational wave emission. It is also fleeting, staying in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory’s (LIGO) sensitive band only for somewhere between tenths of a second and several tens of minutes. However, when there is at least one neutron star, disk formation during the merger may power a slew of potentially detectable electromagnetic counterparts, such as short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), afterglows, and kilonovae. These explosions span the full electromagnetic spectrum and are expected within seconds, hours or days of the merger event. To learn …