ANTARES, I. C., LIGO and Virgo Collaborations(Albert, A. et al), Barrios-Marti, J., Coleiro, A., Colomer, M., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., et al. (2019). Search for Multimessenger Sources of Gravitational Waves and High-energy Neutrinos with Advanced LIGO during Its First Observing Run, ANTARES, and IceCube. Astrophys. J., 870(2), 134–16pp.
Abstract: Astrophysical sources of gravitational waves, such as binary neutron star and black hole mergers or core-collapse supernovae, can drive relativistic outflows, giving rise to non-thermal high-energy emission. High-energy neutrinos are signatures of such outflows. The detection of gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos from common sources could help establish the connection between the dynamics of the progenitor and the properties of the outflow. We searched for associated emission of gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos from astrophysical transients with minimal assumptions using data from Advanced LIGO from its first observing run O1, and data from the ANTARES and IceCube neutrino observatories from the same time period. We focused on candidate events whose astrophysical origins could not be determined from a single messenger. We found no significant coincident candidate, which we used to constrain the rate density of astrophysical sources dependent on their gravitational-wave and neutrino emission processes.
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Auclair, P., Blanco-Pillado, J. J., Figueroa, D. G., Jenkins, A. C., Lewicki, M., Sakellariadou, M., et al. (2020). Probing the gravitational wave background from cosmic strings with LISA. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 04(4), 034–50pp.
Abstract: Cosmic string networks offer one of the best prospects for detection of cosmological gravitational waves (GWs). The combined incoherent GW emission of a large number of string loops leads to a stochastic GW background (SGWB), which encodes the properties of the string network. In this paper we analyze the ability of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) to measure this background, considering leading models of the string networks. We find that LISA will be able to probe cosmic strings with tensions G μgreater than or similar to O(10(-17)), improving by about 6 orders of magnitude current pulsar timing arrays (PTA) constraints, and potentially 3 orders of magnitude with respect to expected constraints from next generation PTA observatories. We include in our analysis possible modifications of the SGWB spectrum due to different hypotheses regarding cosmic history and the underlying physics of the string network. These include possible modifications in the SGWB spectrum due to changes in the number of relativistic degrees of freedom in the early Universe, the presence of a non-standard equation of state before the onset of radiation domination, or changes to the network dynamics due to a string inter-commutation probability less than unity. In the event of a detection, LISA's frequency band is well-positioned to probe such cosmic events. Our results constitute a thorough exploration of the cosmic string science that will be accessible to LISA.
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Boudet, S., Bombacigno, F., Moretti, F., & Olmo, G. J. (2023). Torsional birefringence in metric-affine Chern-Simons gravity: gravitational waves in late-time cosmology. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 01(1), 026–28pp.
Abstract: In the context of the metric-affine Chern-Simons gravity endowed with projective invariance, we derive analytical solutions for torsion and nonmetricity in the homogeneous and isotropic cosmological case, described by a flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric. We discuss in some details the general properties of the cosmological solutions in the presence of a perfect fluid, such as the dynamical stability and the emergence of big bounce points, and we examine the structure of some specific solutions reproducing de Sitter and power law behaviours for the scale factor. Then, we focus on first-order perturbations in the de Sitter scenario, and we study the propagation of gravitational waves in the adiabatic limit, looking at tensor and scalar polarizations. In particular, we find that metric tensor modes couple to torsion tensor components, leading to the appearance, as in the metric version of Chern-Simons gravity, of birefringence, characterized by different dispersion relations for the left and right circularized polarization states. As a result, the purely tensor part of torsion propagates like a wave, while nonmetricity decouples and behaves like a harmonic oscillator. Finally, we discuss scalar modes, outlining as they decay exponentially in time and do not propagate.
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LIGO Sci, V., ANTARES and other Collaborations(Abbott, B.P. et al), Barrios-Marti, J., Coleiro, A., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., Lotze, M., et al. (2017). Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger. Astrophys. J. Lett., 848(2), L12–59pp.
Abstract: On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of similar to 1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg(2) at a luminosity distance of 40(-8)(+8) Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 M-circle dot. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at similar to 40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One-Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over similar to 10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient's position similar to 9 and similar to 16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta.
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Martinelli, M., Scarcella, F., Hogg, N. B., Kavanagh, B. J., Gaggero, D., & Fleury, P. (2022). Dancing in the dark: detecting a population of distant primordial black holes. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 08(8), 006–47pp.
Abstract: Primordial black holes (PBHs) are compact objects proposed to have formed in the early Universe from the collapse of small-scale over-densities. Their existence may be detected from the observation of gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by PBH mergers, if the signals can be distinguished from those produced by the merging of astrophysical black holes. In this work, we forecast the capability of the Einstein Telescope, a proposed third-generation GW observatory, to identify and measure the abundance of a subdominant population of distant PBHs, using the difference in the redshift evolution of the merger rate of the two populations as our discriminant. We carefully model the merger rates and generate realistic mock catalogues of the luminosity distances and errors that would be obtained from GW signals observed by the Einstein Telescope. We use two independent statistical methods to analyse the mock data, finding that, with our more powerful, likelihood-based method, PBH abundances as small as fPBH approximate to 7 x 10(-6) ( fPBH approximate to 2 x 10(-6)) would be distinguishable from f(PBH) = 0 at the level of 3 sigma with a one year (ten year) observing run of the Einstein Telescope. Our mock data generation code, darksirens, is fast, easily extendable and publicly available on GitLab.
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