Prospects for the Detection of Electromagnetic Counterparts to Gravitational Wave Events

Abstract

Various models for electromagnetic emissions correlated with the gravitational wave signals expected to be detectable by the current and planned gravitational wave detectors are studied. The position error on the location of a gravitational wave source is estimated and used to show that it could be possible to observe the electromagnetic counterparts to neutron star–neutron star or neutron star–black hole binary coalescences detected with the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo detectors.