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，并开发技术，使LIGO或LISA探测到的引力波能够精确测量。迄今为止，利用地面探测器（例如LIGO、Virgo和KAGRA）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。GW170817是迄今为止第一个，也是唯一一个让我们能够执行多信使天体物理学的事件；GW170817在引力波和电磁波谱中都被观测到。通过联合观测，我们能够比单独使用任何一个信使了解更多，比如奇异物质的起源，以及开发一种独立的方法来测量哈勃常数。下一个LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA观测运行（O4）将从2023年5月开始，一直持续到2024年底，在那里我们预计每隔几天就会看到新的事件，包括，希望能看到更多的引力波事件与可观测到的电磁波相对应。展望未来，空间探测器LISA将于本世纪30年代中期发射，它将探测引力波频谱的不同部分，而不是地面探测器。在这种情况下，我们将能够探测到，例如，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捕捉到任何产生的电磁对应物。

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.