Neutron star mergers can produce both a short gamma-ray burst lasting under two seconds and gravitational waves. So far, there has only been one joint detection between a gamma-ray burst and gravitational waves in the case of a binary neutron star merger observed in 2017. COSI is a gamma-ray space telescope launching in summer 2027 which will operate alongside more sensitive gravitational wave detectors, creating an opportunity to observe both the short gamma-ray burst and gravitational waves from a neutron star merger. I am predicting the rate of short gamma-ray bursts that will be observed by COSI in order to estimate how often we can expect joint detections with gravitational waves. In doing this, I have developed software to simulate population-level COSI observations of transients, which can be found here.
The prompt gamma-ray emission of gamma-ray bursts usually lasts for no more than several minutes.
On July 2, 2025, the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor detected a gamma-ray burst whose prompt duration was later found to be over 7 hours,
making it the longest ever seen. I led the analysis of Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor data for this extraordinary burst. We found that the
extreme duration and gamma-ray properties cannot be explained by any known origin of gamma-ray bursts. It is instead explained naturally by
a stellar-mass black hole falling into a helium star, and consuming and exploding it from within.
The paper can be found
here.
I lead the development of the spectral and polarization analysis software for COSI. We release annual Data Challenges including realistic simulated COSI datasets and our current version of the tools in order to familiarize the community with COSI analysis.