Detecting optical counterparts to gravitational-wave events with GOTO and developing techniques to enable accurate measurements of gravitational waves

利用GOTO探测引力波事件的光学对应物，并开发能够准确测量LIGO或LISA探测到的引力波的技术。迄今为止，LIGO、VIGO和KAGRA等地面探测器已经观测到90个引力波事件。所有这些事件都是由于黑洞和中子星的合并造成的。GW170817是第一个，也是迄今为止唯一允许我们执行多信使天体物理的事件；GW170817在引力波和电磁光谱中都可以看到。通过联合观测，我们已经能够比单独使用任何一个信使了解更多的东西，比如奇异物质的来源，以及开发一种独立的方法来测量哈勃常数。下一次LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA观测运行(O4)将于2023年5月开始，直到2024年底，我们预计每隔几天就会看到新的事件，希望包括更多具有可观测电磁对应物的引力波事件。展望未来，空间探测器LISA将于本世纪30年代中期发射，它将探测引力波光谱的不同于地面探测器的部分。例如，在这个体制下，我们将能够探测到超大质量黑洞合并。现在是时候开始开发技术，以确保我们能够探测到这些系统，并有可能使传统望远镜能够捕捉到任何由此产生的电磁对应物。

Detecting optical counterparts to gravitational-wave events with GOTO and developing techniques to enable accurate measurements of gravitational waves detected by either LIGO or LISA To date 90 gravitational-wave events have been observed with the ground-based detector, e.g., LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA. All these events have been due to the merger of black holes and neutron stars. GW170817 was the first, and only event so far, that has allowed us to perform multi- messenger astrophysics; GW170817 was seen in both the gravitational-wave and electromagnetic spectrum. With joint observations we have been able to understand so much more than with either messenger alone, such as the origin of exotic materials and developing an independent way to measure the Hubble constant. The next LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run (O4) starts in May 2023 until the end of 2024, where we expect to see new events every few days, including, hopefully, more gravitational-wave events with an observable electromagnetic counterpart. Looking to the future, the space detector LISA is due to be launched in the mid 2030s and it will probe a different part of the gravitational-wave spectrum to ground based detectors. In this regime, we will be able to detect, for example, supermassive black hole mergers. The time is now to start developing the techniques to make sure we can detect these systems and potentially enable conventional telescopes to capture any resulting electromagnetic counterpart.