Abstract
The observability of afterglows from binary neutron star mergers occurring within active galactic nuclei (AGN) disks is investigated. We perform 3D GRMHD simulations of a postmerger system and follow the jet launched from the compact object. We use semianalytic techniques to study the propagation of the blast wave powered by the jet through an AGN disk-like external environment, extending to distances beyond the disk scale height. The synchrotron emission produced by the jet-driven forward shock is calculated to obtain the afterglow emission. The observability of this emission at different frequencies is assessed by comparing it to the quiescent AGN emission. In the scenarios where the afterglow could temporarily outshine the AGN, we find that detection will be more feasible at higher frequencies (≳1014 Hz) and the electromagnetic counterpart could manifest as a fast variability in the AGN emission, on timescales less than a day.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 101 |
| Journal | Astrophysical Journal |
| Volume | 972 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 1 2024 |
Funding
We are grateful to the anonymous referee for providing constructive feedback. It is a pleasure to acknowledge Eliot Quataert and Daniel Kasen for helpful discussions on the simulation setup. We thank Shengtai Li for assistance with utilizing the HPC resources, and Adam M. Dempsey for helpful discussions. A.K. acknowledges support from the Director’s postdoctoral fellowship funded by LANL LDRD project No. 20220808PRD4. A.K., H.L., and B.R.R. gratefully acknowledge the support by LANL LDRD program under project No. 20220087DR. A.T. acknowledges support by NSF AST-2107839 grant. Computational resources for this project were provided by the Los Alamos National Laboratory Institutional Computing Program, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration under contract No. 89233218CNA000001. This research also used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC, allocation m2401) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). NERSC is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. This manuscript has been assigned document release number LA-UR-23-31757.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science