Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-20-2020

Department

Department of Physics

Abstract

A search for time-directional coincidences of ultra-high-energy (UHE) photons above 10 EeV with gravitational wave (GW) events from the LIGO/Virgo runs O1 to O3 is conducted with the Pierre Auger Observatory. Due to the distinctive properties of photon interactions and to the background expected from hadronic showers, a subset of the most interesting GW events is selected based on their localization quality and distance. Time periods of 1000 s around and 1 day after the GW events are analyzed. No coincidences are observed. Upper limits on the UHE photon fluence from a GW event are derived that are typically at ∼7 MeV cm−2 (time period 1000 s) and ∼35 MeV cm−2 (time period 1 day). Due to the proximity of the binary neutron star merger GW170817, the energy of the source transferred into UHE photons above 40 EeV is constrained to be less than 20% of its total GW energy. These are the first limits on UHE photons from GW sources.

Publisher's Statement

© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/acc862

Publication Title

The Astrophysical Journal

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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