Search for Ultra-high-energy Photons from Gravitational Wave Sources with the Pierre Auger Observatory

THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION; SILVIA MOLLERACH

Astrophysical Journal

Institute of Physics

Año: 2023 vol. 952

A search for time-directional coincidences of ultra-high-energy (UHE) photons above 10 EeV with gravitationalwave (GW) events from the LIGO/Virgo runs O1 to O3 is conducted with the Pierre Auger Observatory. Due tothe distinctive properties of photon interactions and to the background expected from hadronic showers, a subset ofthe most interesting GW events is selected based on their localization quality and distance. Time periods of 1000 saround and 1 day after the GW events are analyzed. No coincidences are observed. Upper limits on the UHEphoton fluence from a GW event are derived that are typically at ∼7 MeV cm −2 (time period 1000 s) and∼35 MeV cm −2 (time period 1 day). Due to the proximity of the binary neutron star merger GW170817, theenergy of the source transferred into UHE photons above 40 EeV is constrained to be less than 20% of its total GWenergy. These are the first limits on UHE photons from GW sources.