Speaker
Description
To date, Swift is the most successful discovery engine of the electromagnetic counterparts to neutron star (NS) mergers. In its two decades, Swift has revealed dozens of on-axis afterglows, several kilonovae, and a surprising signal from NS mergers: long-duration GRBs. In this talk, I will present our compilation of NS merger counterparts observed following Swift GRBs and modeled in a uniform way. Our analysis reveals significant diversity in both kilonova and NS merger jet properties, in line with theoretical predictions for heterogenous binary progenitor systems. I will highlight our result that the kilonova ejecta masses of merger-driven long GRBs favor an asymmetric binary progenitor, such as an NS-black hole merger. Finally, I will comment on how GW170817 compares to the population of NS mergers observed following Swift GRBs, and discuss the implications of our studies for multi-messenger astronomy in O4, O5 and beyond.
