SHAO Astrophysics Colloquium 

Title: Electromagnetic Counterparts for binary neutron star mergers   

Speaker: He Gao (Beijing Normal University) 

Time: 3:00 pm, October 24th (Thursday)  

Location: Lecture hall, 3rd floor 

Abstract:  

In August 17, 2017, the LIGO-Virgo scientific collaboration, for the first time, detected a gravitational wave (GW) signal from a binary neutron star (NS) merger event. Multi-wavelength electro-magnetic (EM) counterparts to GW170817 have also been detected. This has opened up a new era of GW astronomy, whereby comprehensive analyses of multi-messenger signals will shed light on both GW and EM studies. For NS-NS mergers, many associated EM counterparts have already been proposed in the literature, and their relative brightness is essentially determined by the properties of the merger remnant. In this talk, I will briefly review the possible EM signatures for different merger remnants. Moreover,  I will talk about how to use the multi-messenger observations for NS-NS mergers to make constraints on the maximum mass of NS.