Bing Zhang (Physics and Astronomy) recently published a paper in the journal . The most important discovery in astronomy in 2017 was the groundbreaking discovery of a gravitational wave event GW170817 due to the merger of two neutron stars as well as its associated short GRB (gamma ray burst) 170817A and other electromagnetic counterpart emissions in multi-wavelength. The paper reports an independent analysis of the emission properties of GRB 170817A as well as the physical implications. This paper has 18 authors, including four former 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Ph.D. students (He Gao, Ye Li, Hou-Jun Lü, and Bin-Bin Zhang) and three former 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ postdoc fellows (Wei-Hua Lei, Xue-Feng Wu, and En-Wei Liang) as the key authors. This paper nicely complements the official papers by the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave detector team and the NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope team by studying the luminosity function of short GRBs as well as the possible physical mechanism that powers this unique event.
