Abstract
The Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) on the {\it Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope}, for the first time, detected a short gamma ray burst (SGRB) signal that accompanies a gravitational wave signal GW170817 in 2017. The detection and localization of the gravitational wave and gamma-ray source led all other space- and ground-based observatories to measure its kilonova and afterglow across the electromagnetic spectrum, which started a new era in astronomy, the so-called multi-messenger astronomy. Therefore, localizations of short gamma-ray bursts, as counterparts of verified gravitational waves, is of crucial importance since this will allow observatories to measure the kilonovae and afterglows associated with these explosions. Our results show that, an automated network of observatories, such as the Stellar Observations Network Group (SONG), can be coupled with an interconnected multi-hop array of CubeSats for transients (IMPACT) to localize SGRBs. IMPACT is a mega-constellation of $\sim$80 CubeSats, each of which is equipped with gamma-ray detectors with ultra-high temporal resolution to conduct full sky surveys in an energy range of 50-300 keV and downlink the required data promptly for high accuracy localization of the detected SGRB to a ground station. Additionally, we analyze propagation and transmission delays from receipt of a SGRB signal to ground station offload to consider the effects of constellation design, link, and network parameters such as satellites per plane, data rate, and coding gain from erasure correcting codes among others. IMPACT will provide near-real-time localization of SGRBs with a total delay of $\sim$5 s, and will enable SONG telescopes to join the efforts to pursue multi-messenger astronomy and help decipher the underlying physics of these events.
Highlights
The first detection of the gravitational wave (GW) signal from GW150914, which was produced by the mergers of stellar-mass black hole (BH) binaries, by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015 (Abbott et al, 2016b), has opened a new era in GW astronomy
We aim to calculate a number of 6U CubeSats to achieve high-accuracy localization so that short gamma ray burst (SGRB) afterglows can be observed by Stellar Observations Network Group (SONG)
A larger effective surface area will increase the accuracy in detecting the timing of the GRB trigger
Summary
The first detection of the gravitational wave (GW) signal from GW150914, which was produced by the mergers of stellar-mass black hole (BH) binaries, by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015 (Abbott et al, 2016b), has opened a new era in GW astronomy. Three years after its first detection, LIGO in the United States and Virgo, another observatory in Santo Stefano, Macerata, Italy, observed GW signals from GW170814 This helped the two teams to confine the position of the source to 60 deg in the sky because the third observatory provided additional TDoA information (Abbott et al, 2017a). Complementary to the detected GW signals, the gamma-ray burst monitor (GBM) on Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope detected a short gamma-ray burst, GRB 170817A, 1.7 s after the coalescence, supporting the first hypothesis of a neutron star merger These subsequent detections made by GW and gammaray observatories provided, for the first time, the direct evidence that merging neutron star binaries generate short gamma-ray bursts and GWs. Fast localization and identification of the electromagnetic counterparts enabled observations of the source across the whole energy spectrum from radio to gamma-ray wavelengths. This joint observational effort, the so-called multimessenger astronomy, provides insights into astrophysics, dense matter, gravitation, and cosmology (Abbott et al, 2017b)
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