GW170817, Ten Years Later: What have we learned, open problems, and future prospects

Co-sponsored by the INT, N3AS, CeNAM and FRIB

About the Conference

On August 17, 2017, the LIGO-Virgo network detected gravitational waves from a pair of merging neutron stars and localized them to a region small enough to search. Fermi-GBM caught a short gamma-ray burst 1.7 seconds after the merger, confirmed within minutes by INTEGRAL; eleven hours later, a kilonova was found in NGC 4993. What followed was extraordinary. A single event tied short gamma-ray bursts to merging neutron stars, delivered the first standard-siren measurement of the Hubble constant, gave us our first handle on the tidal deformability of neutron stars, and showed us the r-process in action for the first time.

Ten years and thousands of papers later, those data are still producing results, yet many questions remain open: when (and whether) the remnant collapsed, how much r-process material was ejected, and how GRB 170817A was launched. GW170817 is still the only gravitational-wave event with an electromagnetic counterpart of its kind, but the next one could come at any time. When it does, much of the work will be done by researchers who were in middle school in 2017, two or more PhD generations removed from the discovery and from everything the community learned by living through it.

The 10th anniversary of GW170817 is a unique opportunity to bring veterans and future leaders together to celebrate the discovery, share what the different communities have learned from the data, and chart the future of multi-messenger astronomy, ensuring continuity between the first multi-messenger neutron star merger and the next.

Goals

This international conference brings together astronomers, gravitational-wave experimentalists and data analysts, modelers, and nuclear theorists. Its aims are twofold:

• Take stock. Summarize our current understanding of GW170817, built on ten years of continued and intense observational and modeling effort.
• Prepare for the next discovery. What went right in 2017, and what could have been done better? What are the open problems and future prospects?

Just as importantly, the conference brings together the pioneers of multi-messenger astronomy, those who made GW170817 a reality, with those who started graduate school after 2017: the future leaders of our field.

Format

The five-day program covers gravitational-wave detection and sky localization; radio, X-ray, and optical astronomy; modeling and data analysis; and nuclear astrophysics. Rather than confining each theme to its own day, each day combines observational, modeling, and nuclear-physics perspectives. Every day opens with a keynote from a leader in the field, followed by invited talks and short contributed talks, with priority given to early-career speakers for contributed slots.

Two panel discussions frame the week: one on what we have learned from GW170817, and one on the future of multi-messenger astronomy. Both are deliberately cross-cutting, seating observers alongside modelers and nuclear theorists.

The conference also includes a public lecture, co-organized with the University of Washington Astronomy Department.

Funding Support

• INT
• N3AS
• NP3M