A Deep CFHT Optical Search for a Counterpart to the Possible Neutron Star Black Hole Merger GW190814

We present a wide-field optical imaging search for electromagnetic counterparts to the likely neutron star–black hole (NS–BH) merger GW190814/S190814bv. This compact binary merger was detected through gravitational waves by the LIGO/Virgo interferometers, with masses suggestive of an NS–BH merger. We imaged the LIGO/Virgo localization region using the MegaCam instrument on the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). We describe our hybrid observing strategy of both tiling and galaxy-targeted observations, as well as our image differencing and transient detection pipeline. Our observing campaign produced some of the deepest multiband images of the region between 1.7 and 8.7 days post-merger, reaching a 5σ depth of g > 22.8 (AB mag) at 1.7 days and i > 23.1 and i > 23.9 at 3.7 and 8.7 days, respectively. These observations cover a mean total integrated probability of 67.0% of the localization region. We find no compelling candidate transient counterparts to this merger in our images, which suggests that the lighter object was tidally disrupted inside of the BH’s innermost stable circular orbit, the transient lies outside of the observed sky footprint, or the lighter object is a low-mass BH. We use 5σ source detection upper limits from our images in the NS–BH interpretation of this merger to constrain the mass of the kilonova ejecta to be M ej ≲ 0. 015M ⊙ for a “blue” () kilonova and M ej ≲ 0. 04M ⊙ for a “red” () kilonova. Our observations emphasize the key role of large-aperture telescopes and wide-field imagers such as CFHT MegaCam in enabling deep searches for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational-wave events.