Gravitational-Wave Research Seminar

On August 14, 2019, a high significance gravitational wave event was discovered, labelled S190814bv. The event was particularly interesting because of its low false-alarm rate, the likely neutron star-black hole merger classification, and the exceptionally good localization of 23 deg sq. In this talk, I will describe the electromagnetic follow-up of S190814bv conducted primarily with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), a wide-field optical imager at the prime focus of the 4-m Blanco telescope at CTIO in Chile. The GROWTH collaboration processed DECam data in real time and conducted extensive optical/infrared/radio observations of many transient discovered with deep imaging in the 90% localization probability region. In addition, I will discuss how the combination of new theoretical models with our systematic observations allowed us to gain insights on the properties of S190814bv from a purely electromagnetic analysis.