THE MERGER OF BINARY COMPACT OBJECTS IS THE MOST PROMISING CANDIDATE FOR GRAVITATIONAL WAVE (GW) SIGNAL AND PRIME CANDIDATE FOR THE CENTRAL ENGINE OF SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURST (SGRB). WITH ALIGO/VIRGO QUICKLY APPROACHING THEIR DESIGN SENSITIVITY THE IDENTIFICATION OF POSSIBLE ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPARTS TO GW TRIGGERS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER. DUE TO ITS LARGE FIELD OF VIEW ITS CONTINUOUS SKY SURVEY AND ITS GOOD POINT SPREAD FUNCTION THE FERMI LAT COMPLEMENTS THE GBM CAPABILITIES TO DETECT SGRBS AND IS MORE SUITED TO TRIGGER MULTIWAVELENGTH FOLLOW-UPS OF NARROW FIELD INSTRUMENTS. OUR TEAM PART OF A FERMI/ALIGO/VIRGO MOU IS PROPOSING TO DEVELOP A SUITE OF ANALYSIS TOOLS FOR A RAPID FOLLOW-UP OF GW TRIGGERS USING FERMI LAT DATA. OUR RESULTS WILL ENABLE RAPID FOLLOWUP OF GW EVENTS AND WILL HELP UNDERSTANDING THE ASTROPHYSICAL NATURE OF THE SOURCE.

The Leland Stanford Junior University

Investigators