Prospects of LIGO for constraining inclination of merging compact binaries associated with three-dimensionally localized short-hard GRBs

Abstract

We study prospects of a method to constrain the inclination of a coalescing compact binary by detecting its gravitational waves associated with a three-dimensionally localized (direction and distance) short-hard gamma-ray burst. We take advantage of a synergy of these two observations, and our method can be applied even with a single interferometer. For a nearly face-on binary the inclination angle $I$ can be constrained in the range 1-1/SNR < cosI \le 1 (SNR: the signal to noise ratio of gravitational wave detection), provided that the error of the distance estimation is negligible. This method would help us to study properties of the short-hard bursts, including potentially collimated jet-like structures as indicated by recent observation.