Measuring the neutron star tidal deformability with equation-of-state-independent relations and gravitational waves
Abstract
Gravitational wave measurements of binary neutron star coalescences offer information about the properties of the extreme matter that comprises the stars. Despite our expectation that all neutron stars in the Universe obey the same equation of state, i.e. the properties of the matter that forms them are universal, current tidal inference analyses treat the two bodies as independent. We present a method to measure the effect of tidal interactions in the gravitational wave signal—and hence constrain the equation of state—that assumes that the two binary components obey the same equation of state. Our method makes use of a relation between the tidal deformabilities of the two stars given the ratio of their masses, a relation that has been shown to only have a weak dependence on the equation of state. We use this to link the tidal deformabilities of the two stars in a realistic parameter inference study while simultaneously marginalizing over the error in the relation. This approach incorporates more physical information into our analysis, thus leading to a better measurement of tidal effects in gravitational wave signals. Through simulated signals we estimate that uncertainties in the measured tidal parameters are reduced by a factor of at least 2—and in some cases up to 10—depending on the equation of state and mass ratio of the system.
Additional Information
© 2018 American Physical Society. Received 9 April 2018; published 21 May 2018. We thank Kent Yagi for fruitful discussions on the EoS-independent relations and for sharing his data with us. We thank Christopher Berry and Wynn Ho for helpful comments on the manuscript. The authors acknowledge the LIGO Data Grid clusters.Attached Files
Published - PhysRevD.97.104036.pdf
Accepted Version - 1804.03221.pdf
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- CaltechAUTHORS:20200804-133036956
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2020-08-05Created from EPrint's datestamp field
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field