Journal
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF JAPAN
Volume 69, Issue 6, Pages -Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/pasj/psx118
Keywords
gravitational waves; nuclear reactions, nucleosynthesis, abundances; stars: neutron
Categories
Funding
- MEXT [JP17H06363, JP15H00788, JP24103003, JP10147214, JP10147207]
- JSPS [JP16H02183, JP15H02075, JP15H02069, JP26800103, JP25800103]
- Toyota Foundation [D11-R-0830]
- Mitsubishi Foundation
- Yamada Science Foundation
- National Institute of Natural Sciences (NINS)
- Inoue Foundation for Science, Optical & Near-Infrared Astronomy Inter-University Cooperation Program from the MEXT
- National Research Foundation of South Africa
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [15H02062, 15H02075, 17H06133, 15H05440, 15H02069, 17H06357, 16H05732, 17H06363, 17H06364] Funding Source: KAKEN
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GW170817 is the first detected gravitational wave source from a neutron star merger. We present the Japanese collaboration for gravitational-wave electro-magnetic (J-GEM) follow-up observations of SSS17a, an electromagnetic counterpart of GW170817. SSS17a shows a 2.5mag decline in the z band during the period between 1.7 and 7.7 d after the merger. Such a rapid decline is not comparable with supernovae light curves at any epoch. The color of SSS17a also evolves rapidly and becomes redder during later epochs: the z - H color has changed by approximately 2.5mag during the period between 0.7 and 7.7 d. The rapid evolutions of both the color and the optical brightness are consistent with the expected properties of a kilonova that is powered by the radioactive decay of newly synthesized r-process nuclei. Kilonova models with Lanthanide elements can reproduce the aforementioned observed properties well, which suggests that r-process nucleosynthesis beyond the second peak takes place in SSS17a. However, the absolute magnitude of SSS17a is brighter than the expected brightness of the kilonova models with an ejectamass of 0.01M(circle dot), which suggests a more intensemass ejection (similar to 0.03M(circle dot)) or possibly an additional energy source.
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