A first-principles binary neutron star merger model of GW170817, GRB170817A, and AT2017gfo
astro-ph.HE, gr-qc
Submitted: 2026-08-27
Updated: 2026-08-27
Comments: 9 pages for the main text and 3 figures. 40 pages for the Supplementary Material
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
The gist: The multimessenger observation of the binary neutron star merger event GW170817, associated with its electromagnetic counterparts GRB170817A and AT2017gfo, marked a milestone in astrophysics, yet its
Abstract
The multimessenger observation of the binary neutron star merger event GW170817, associated with its electromagnetic counterparts GRB170817A and AT2017gfo, marked a milestone in astrophysics, yet its unified physical explanation remains elusive. We conduct an end-to-end simulation based on a first-principles general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics neutrino-radiation transfer merger simulation, followed by nucleosynthesis calculations and photon radiative transfer to generate kilonova light curves. We show that the large-scale dynamo simultaneously produces a relativistic jet with an isotropic-equivalent luminosity of about 10 51 erg s-1 and about 0.08M of neutron-rich ejecta, reproducing the GRB170817A afterglow and the AT2017gfo kilonova light curves. Our results establish a unified first-principles framework for interpreting binary neutron star mergers across gravitational wave, gamma-ray burst, and kilonova observations.
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