University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations May 2016 Monsters in the Dark: High Energy Signatures of Black Hole Formation with Multimessenger Astronomy Alexander L. Urban University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons, and the Physics Commons Recommended Citation Urban, Alexander L., "Monsters in the Dark: High Energy Signatures of Black Hole Formation with Multimessenger Astronomy" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1218. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/1218 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. MONSTERS IN THE DARK: HIGH ENERGY SIGNATURES OF BLACK HOLE FORMATION WITH MULTIMESSENGER ASTRONOMY by Alexander L. Urban A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics at The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee May 2016 ABSTRACT MONSTERS IN THE DARK: GLIMPSING THE HIGH ENERGY SIGNATURES OF BLACK HOLE FORMATION WITH MULTIMESSENGER ASTRONOMY by Alexander L. Urban The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, 2016 Under the Supervision of Professor Patrick R. Brady When two compact objects inspiral and violently merge it is a rare cosmic event, producing fantastically “luminous” gravitational wave emission. It is also fleeting, stay- ing in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory’s (LIGO) sensitive band only for somewhere between tenths of a second and several tens of minutes. However, when there is at least one neutron star, disk formation during the merger may power a slew of potentially detectable electromagnetic counterparts, such as short γ-ray bursts (GRBs), afterglows, and kilonovae.