Exploring an Afterglow Flux Code to Model Jets from Binary Neutron Star Mergers

Merging neutron star binary systems have long been thought to be the source of short Gamma-ray Bursts: highly energetic and collimated jets. This model was recently confirmed with observations of GW170817, which involved an off-axis jet. As the jet interacts with the external medium it emits multi-wavelength radiation called the afterglow. Here we test the viability of the open-source Python package afterglowpy, developed by Ryan et al. (2020), for producing off-axis afterglows consistent with the X-ray and radio data of GW170817. We compare the afterglowpy models with those presented by Kathirgamaraju et al. (2019). Lastly, we test the viability of implementing Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to these models to scan the parameter space and produce a best fit curve for the observed afterglow.