Editor’s Note: For the remainder of 2025, we’ll be looking at a few selections that we haven’t yet discussed on AAS Nova from among the most-downloaded articles published in AAS journals this year. The usual posting schedule will resume January 2nd.
Search for Gravitational Waves Emitted from SN 2023ixf
Published May 2025
Main takeaway:
The LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA collaborations searched for gravitational waves from the core-collapse supernova SN 2023ixf. Though no significant gravitational wave events were detected during times when two or more gravitational wave detectors were online, the non-detection of gravitational waves from this nearby supernova places constraints on the amount of energy emitted by the explosion in the form of gravitational waves, the shape of the proto-neutron star produced in the collapse, and more.
Why it’s interesting:
When a massive star expires in a core-collapse supernova, the collapse of the stellar core into a neutron star or black hole produces gravitational waves. These gravitational waves, along with a stream of neutrinos, should arrive at Earth before the light from the explosion does; gravitational waves and neutrinos can easily escape the dense, roiling ejecta from the explosion, but photons take some time to claw their way through the debris. Gravitational waves from a supernova have never been detected, but the nearby supernova SN 2023ixf, which occurred in a galaxy about 20 million light-years away, offered the best recent opportunity to detect these waves.
Photometric evolution of SN 2023ixf in its early days and gravitational wave coverage leading up to the supernova’s discovery (inset image). [LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaborations 2025]
What we learned from this non-detection:
Using the non-detection of SN 2023ixf, researchers placed stringent constraints on the gravitational wave energy and luminosity of a supernova explosion, but an even closer supernova is still needed to begin to rule out model predictions for these quantities. To estimate the distance out to which we can expect to detect gravitational waves from collapsing stars, the collaboration members injected synthetic supernova signals into their data. The majority of non-rotating explosions can be detected out to about 22,000 light-years — meaning events on the far side of our galaxy remain inaccessible to current detectors — while rapidly rotating explosions should be detectable out to nearly 100,000 light-years, pushing the detection horizon beyond the borders of the Milky Way.
Citation
A. G. Abac et al 2025 ApJ 985 183. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/adc681