TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 39125 SUBJECT: LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S250202cu: Identification of a GW compact binary merger candidate DATE: 25/02/02 20:04:16 GMT FROM: Sivananda Thondapu sivananda.thondapu@ligo.org
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration report:
We identified the compact binary merger candidate S250202cu during real-time processing of data from LIGO Hanford Observatory (H1) and LIGO Livingston Observatory (L1) at 2025-02-02 18:49:02.510 UTC (GPS time: 1422557360.510). The candidate was found by the CWB BBH [1], GstLAL [2], and MBTA [3] analysis pipelines.
S250202cu is an event of interest because its false alarm rate, as estimated by the online analysis, is 1.5e-08 Hz, or about one in 2 years. The event's properties can be found at this URL:
https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S250202cu
The classification of the GW signal, in order of descending probability, is BBH (>99%), Terrestrial (<1%), NSBH (<1%), or BNS (<1%).
Varying broadband noise in the LIGO Hanford detector was present at the time of the event, which may affect the parameters or the significance of the candidate.
Assuming the candidate is astrophysical in origin, the probability that the lighter compact object is consistent with a neutron star mass (HasNS) is <1%. [4] Using the masses and spins inferred from the signal, the probability of matter outside the final compact object (HasRemnant) is <1%. [4] Both HasNS and HasRemnant consider the support of several neutron star equations of state. The probability that either of the binary components lies between 3 and 5 solar masses (HasMassGap) is 4%.
Two sky maps are available at this time and can be retrieved from the GraceDB event page: * bayestar.multiorder.fits,0, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [5], distributed via GCN notice about 30 seconds after the candidate event time. * bayestar.multiorder.fits,1, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [5], distributed via GCN notice about 5 minutes after the candidate event time.
The preferred sky map at this time is bayestar.multiorder.fits,1. For the bayestar.multiorder.fits,1 sky map, the 90% credible region is 4327 deg2. Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 5526 +/- 1810 Mpc (a posteriori mean +/- standard deviation).
For further information about analysis methodology and the contents of this alert, refer to the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA Public Alerts User Guide https://emfollow.docs.ligo.org/.
[1] T. Mishra et al. PRD 105, 083018 (2022) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.105.083018 [2] Tsukada et al. PRD 108, 043004 (2023) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.108.043004 and Ewing et al. (2023) arXiv:2305.05625
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