Kavli Affiliate: Daniel E. Holz
| First 5 Authors: Lei Hu, Tomás Cabrera, Antonella Palmese, James Freeburn, Mattia Bulla
| Summary:
Gravitational wave (GW) neutron star mergers with an associated
electromagnetic counterpart constitute powerful probes of binary evolution, the
production sites of heavy elements, general relativity, and the expansion of
the universe. Only a handful of candidate GW binary mergers during the fourth
LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA observing run (O4) so far are believed to include a neutron
star. We present optical-near infrared follow-up observations of the candidate
neutron-star black hole GW merger S250206dm. This is the first
high-significance mass gap neutron star-black hole candidate observed by
multiple GW detectors (thus having a significantly smaller sky localization
than one-detector events), offering the first opportunity to effectively follow
up a GW event of this kind. Our GW MultiMessenger Astronomy DECam Survey
(GW-MMADS) campaign consisted of a wide-field search using the Dark Energy
Camera (DECam) and T80-South (T80S), as well as galaxy-targeted observations
using the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) imager and the Wendelstein
2.1m 3-channel camera. No viable kilonova counterpart was found in our
observations. We use our observation depths to place competitive constraints on
kilonova models similar to or brighter than the GW170817 kilonova AT 2017gfo
within our observed fields, ruling out 100% of such models with SOAR
galaxy-targeted observations and $sim43$% (48%) with DECam (DECam and T80S).
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