The first observing run (O1) of the Advanced LIGO detectors (Aasi et al. 2015) marked the dawn of gravitational wave (GW) astronomy with the groundbreaking discovery of merging black holes (BHs; Abbott et al. 2016e, 2016g) and Abbott et al.(2016b). The second observing run (O2) continued unveiling the population of binary BHs (BBHs; Abbott et al. 2017b, 2017c, 2017d), saw the addition of the Virgo observatory to the detector network (Abbott et al. 2017d), and culminated in the spectacular multimessenger observations of a binary neutron star (BNS) merger, summarized in Abbott et al.(2017e, 2017f). Simultaneously observing the same astrophysical event in both gravitational and electromagnetic radiation will continue to uniquely enrich our understanding of sources. Because GWs negligibly interact with matter they are directly encoded with information about the central engines of the most violent, dynamic processes in the universe. Electromagnetic (EM) waves, on the other hand, are tightly coupled to matter thus providing information about the material and surrounding environment being affected by the central engine (Metzger & Berger 2012). Several astrophysical transient phenomena are thought to produce GW and EM emission strong enough to be detected by current or proposed observatories, including soft gamma-ray repeaters, rapidly rotating core collapse supernovae, BNS mergers, and gamma-ray bursts. Here, we focus on short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs), now directly confirmed to arise from the mergers of compact stellar remnants to which groundbased GW detectors are most sensitive (Abbott et al. 2017a). This paper is limited in scope to analysis of times during O1, and focuses on the follow-up searches of data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) near in time to the GW search candidates. Results for the search in GW data for known GRBs that occurred during O1 can be found in Abbott et al.(2017g).

Despite the consensus view that there would be no bright EM emission associated with stellar-mass BBH mergers, comprehensive observing campaigns with EM observatories were carried out. For example, 25 participating teams of observers received and responded to notifications of the GW150914 detection, with follow-up observations taken from the radio to gamma-ray bands (Abbott et al. 2016f). In the follow-up analysis of the time around the first BBH merger observation, GW150914, the Fermi GBM found a weak transient signal (Connaughton et al. 2016), GW150914-GBM, though no corresponding signal was observed in other gammaray instruments (Hurley et al. 2016; Savchenko et al. 2016; Tavani et al. 2016), nor was a similar signal found in relation to the other unambiguous GW detection in O1, GW151226 (Abbott et al. 2016e; Adriani et al. 2016; Racusin et al. 2017),