Fermi observations of the LIGO event GW170104

Abstract

We present the \emph{Fermi} Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and Large Area Telescope (LAT) observations of the LIGO binary black hole merger (BBH) event GW170104. No candidate electromagnetic counterparts was detected by either GBM or LAT. A detailed analysis of the GBM and LAT data over timescales from seconds to days covering the LIGO localization region is presented. The resulting flux upper bound from the GBM is (5.2--9.4)$\times$10$^{-7}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ in the 10-1000 keV range and from the LAT is (0.2--13)$\times$10$^{-9}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ in the 0.1--1 GeV range. We also describe the improvements to our automated pipelines and analysis techniques for searching for and characterizing the potential electromagnetic counterparts for future gravitational wave events from Advanced LIGO/VIRGO.