The New Era of Gravitational Wave Counterparts

The first detection of gravitational waves from the merger of two neutron stars brought about an array of electromagnetic counterparts including a coincident short gamma-ray burst, an evolving blue to red kilonova, and a late-time afterglow from the interaction of the jet with the surrounding environment. This was the first time that all of these components were detected together and by far the nearest neutron star merger ever measured. In this talk, I’ll describe this important discovery, what we have learned from it and its impact on topics from jet physics to cosmology. GW170817 kicked off just the beginning of a new era of discovery as we look forward to more sensitive gravitational wave detectors and has inspired a new fleet of ground- and space-based observatories designed to study them.