High-energy astrophysics and the search for sources of gravitational waves

摘要

The dawn of the gravitational-wave (GW) era has sparked a greatly renewed interest into possible links between sources of high-energy radiation and GWs. The most luminous high-energy sources-gammaray bursts (GRBs)-have long been considered as very likely sources of GWs, particularly from shortduration GRBs, which are thought to originate from the merger of two compact objects such as binary neutron stars and a neutron star-black hole binary. In this paper, we discuss: (i) the high-energy emission from short-duration GRBs; (ii) what other sources of high-energy radiation may be observed from binary mergers; and (iii) how searches for highenergy electromagnetic counterparts to GW events are performed with current space facilities. While current high-energy facilities, such as Swift and Fermi, play a crucial role in the search for electromagnetic counterparts, new spacemissions will greatly enhance our capabilities for joint observations. We discuss why such facilities, which incorporate new technology that enables very wide-field X-ray imaging, are required if we are to truly exploit the multi-messenger era.