The AGILE Pipeline for Gravitational Waves Events Follow-up

Abstract

The first direct detection of gravitational waves (GW) by Advanced LIGO detectors in September 2015 has drawn the attention of the astrophysical community that is now searching for the electromagnetic counterparts of the detected GW events. The AGILE (Astro-Rivelatore Gamma a Immagini Leggero) mission is primarily devoted to the high-energy astrophysical study of gamma-ray sources in the 30 MeV to 30 GeV energy range. The capability of the AGILE satellite for the discovery of transients is unique: the actual spinning configuration of the satellite, together with a large field of view and a good sensitivity of F =(1-2) ×10<SUP>-8</SUP>ergcm<SUP>-2</SUP> s<SUP>-1</SUP> for 100s integrations, provides a coverage of 80% of the sky, with each position exposed for 100 seconds, 200 times a day. The AGILE team signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the LIGO/Virgo collaboration to follow the GW notices provided through the GCN network. <P />In this paper we describe our automated pipeline that reacts to LIGO/Virgo GW notices and performs different kind of automated analysis to boost the search for of GW event counterparts.