Radio Emission from Short Gamma-ray Bursts in the Multi-Messenger Era

Nicole M. Lloyd-Ronning, Christopher L. Fryer, Dieter H. Hartmann, Brandon Wiggins

Published 2017-09-25Version 1

We investigate the expected radio emission from short GRBs, guided by the observed distributions of their afterglow parameters. Our motivation is two-fold: 1) In light of recent results suggesting that in some cases the radio afterglow emission is a result of the reverse shock, we investigate the extent to which this component is detectable for short GRBs given the set of observed/fitted GRB parameters. 2) With the advent of gravitational wave (GW) detections of binary compact object mergers, we estimate the spherical component of the radio emission - both off-axis jet emission and emission from the dynamical ejecta of a compact object merger - showing the fraction of GRBs detectable in the radio that may be coincident with a GW signal from a neutron star (NS) merger. At the distance to which aLIGO at design specification is sensitive to GWs from NS mergers, we may detect up to 20 % of off-axis jet radio components of these events, and up to about 10 % of events with radio emission from the tidal ejecta shocking with the external medium.