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Astrophysics, Gravitation and Cosmology Seminar - Ariadna Murguia Berthier (Northwestern) "The fate of the merger remnant in GW170817 and its imprint on the jet structure "

Speaker: Ariadna Murguia Berthier (Northwestern)
Date: 2/16/2022
Time: 12 p.m.
Location: Via Zoom
Event Contact: Brandy Koebbe
bkoebbe@illinois.edu
Sponsor: Department of Physics
Event Type: Seminar/Symposium
 

On August 17, 2017, LIGO/Virgo detected the first gravitational waves from merging neutron stars. This event, known as GW170817 was accompanied by observations all over the electromagnetic spectrum.  The peculiar gamma-ray burst that followed the merger in GW170817, is unlike any gamma-ray burst observed before. In order to explain the afterglow observations, there is a need for the jet launched after the merger to have structure, which is a natural consequence of the interaction of the jet with the ambient medium. In this talk, I will show special relativistic simulations of the interaction of the jet with several outflows launched during the merger and compare the simulations to the observation. I will then use the results in order to constrain key properties of the merger, such as the delay time between the merger and the collapse to a black hole.