A DECam Search for an Optical Counterpart to the LIGO Gravitational Wave Event GW151226

P. S. Cowperthwaite , E. Berger , M. Soares-Santos , J. Annis , D. Brout , D. A. Brown , E. Buckley-Geer , S. B. Cenko

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H. Y. Chen R. Chornock H. T. Diehl Z. Doctor A. Drlica-Wagner M. R. Drout B. Farr D. A. Finley R. J. Foley W. Fong D. B. Fox J. Frieman J. Garcia-Bellido M. S. S. Gill R. A. Gruendl K. Herner D. E. Holz D. Kasen R. Kessler H. Lin R. Margutti J. Marriner T. Matheson B. D. Metzger E. H. Neilsen Jr. E. Quataert A. Rest M. Sako D. Scolnic N. Smith F. Sobreira G. M. Strampelli V. A. Villar A. R. Walker W. Wester P. K. G. Williams B. Yanny T. M. C. Abbott F. B. Abdalla S. Allam R. Armstrong K. Bechtol A. Benoit-Levy E. Bertin D. Brooks D. L. Burke A. Carnero Rosell M. Carrasco Kind J. Carretero F. J. Castander C. E. Cunha C. B. D'Andrea L. N. da Costa S. Desai J. P. Dietrich A. E. Evrard A. Fausti Neto P. Fosalba D. W. Gerdes T. Giannantonio D. A. Goldstein D. Gruen G. Gutierrez K. Honscheid D. J. James M. W. G. Johnson M. D. Johnson E. Krause K. Kuehn N. Kuropatkin M. Lima M. A. G. Maia J. L. Marshall F. Menanteau R. Miquel J. J. Mohr R. C. Nichol B. Nord R. Ogando A. A. Plazas K. Reil A. K. Romer E. Sanchez V. Scarpine I. Sevilla-Noarbe R. C. Smith E. Suchyta G. Tarle D. Thomas R. C. Thomas D. L. Tucker J. Weller

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keywords eventobservationsopticaldaysgw151226approx21behaviorcounterpart

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We report the results of a Dark Energy Camera (DECam) optical follow-up of the gravitational wave (GW) event GW151226, discovered by the Advanced LIGO detectors. Our observations cover 28.8 deg$^2$ of the localization region in the $i$ and $z$ bands (containing 3% of the BAYESTAR localization probability), starting 10 hours after the event was announced and spanning four epochs at $2-24$ days after the GW detection. We achieve $5\sigma$ point-source limiting magnitudes of $i\approx21.7$ and $z\approx21.5$, with a scatter of $0.4$ mag, in our difference images. Given the two day delay, we search this area for a rapidly declining optical counterpart with $\gtrsim 3\sigma$ significance steady decline between the first and final observations. We recover four sources that pass our selection criteria, of which three are cataloged AGN. The fourth source is offset by $5.8$ arcsec from the center of a galaxy at a distance of 187 Mpc, exhibits a rapid decline by $0.5$ mag over $4$ days, and has a red color of $i-z\approx 0.3$ mag. These properties roughly match the expectations for a kilonova. However, this source was detected several times, starting $94$ days prior to GW151226, in the Pan-STARRS Survey for Transients (dubbed as PS15cdi) and is therefore unrelated to the GW event. Given its long-term behavior, PS15cdi is likely a Type IIP supernova that transitioned out of its plateau phase during our observations, mimicking a kilonova-like behavior. We comment on the implications of this detection for contamination in future optical follow-up observations.

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A DECam Search for an Optical Counterpart to the LIGO Gravitational Wave Event GW151226

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