Compact radio emission indicates a structured jet was produced by a binary neutron star merger
The binary neutron star merger event GW170817 was detected through both electromagnetic radiation and gravitational waves. Its afterglow emission may have been produced by either a narrow relativistic jet or an isotropic outflow. High-spatial-resolution measurements of the source size and displacement can discriminate between these scenarios. We present very-long-baseline interferometry observations, performed 207.4 days after the merger by using a global network of 32 radio telescopes. The apparent source size is constrained to be smaller than 2.5 milli-arc seconds at the 90% confidence level. This excludes the isotropic outflow scenario, which would have produced a larger apparent size, indicating that GW170817 produced a structured relativistic jet. Our rate calculations show that at least 10% of neutron star mergers produce such a jet.© 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved. All rights reserved. ; The National Institute of Astrophysics is is acknowledged for PRIN-grant (2017) 1.05.01.88.06. The Italian Ministry for University and Research (MIUR) is acknowledged through the project >FIGARO> (Prin-MIUR) grant 1.05.06.13. ASI is acknowledged for grant I/004/11/3. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement 730562 (RadioNet). The Spanish Ministerio de Economa y Competitividad (MINECO) is acknowledged for financial support under grants AYA201676012-C3-1-P, FPA2015-69210-C6-2-R, and MDM-2014-0369 of ICCUB (Unidad de Excelencia >Mara de Maeztu>). M.A.P.-T. acknowledges support from the Spanish MINECO through grants AYA2012-38491-C02-02 and AYA2015-63939-C2-1-P.T.A. is supported by the National Key R&D Programme of China (2018YFA0404603). E.C.-M. acknowledges support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement 653477. S.F. thanks the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (OTKA NN110333) for support. The Long Baseline Array is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, which is funded by the Australian Government for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO. ; Peer Reviewed