Very high energy follow-up programs of gravitational wave and transient alerts with the MAGIC telescopes

After 100 years from Einstein's formulation of general relativity, the O1 LIGO-Virgo science run provided the first direct detection of gravitational waves. The MAGIC telescopes, observing in the very high energy band (VHE ≳ 100 GeV), participate to the vast collaboration of electromagnetic facilities that follow up candidate gravitational waves events. In the next months the aLIGO and aVIRGO detectors will approach their design sensitivity, and an increasing number of gravitational waves detections is expected. The observations in, both, gravitational waves and electromagnetic channels will play a key role in our understanding of the physics of these transient events, yielding a rich scientific output. By taking advantage of its fast slewing, large efflective area, and sensitivity, MAGIC could provide important information on the gravitational waves counterpart in an energy range not afflected by selective absorption processes typical of other wavelenghts in the redshift range covered by the GW detectors for the various plausible classes of sources. © 2017 Author(s).