Neutron-star mergers in scalar-tensor theories of gravity

By E. Barausse, Carlos Palenzuela, M. Ponce, Luis Lehner. 2012

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Scalar-tensor theories of gravity are natural phenomenological alternatives to General Relativity, where the gravitational interaction is mediated by a scalar degree of freedom, besides the usual tensor gravitons. In regions of the parameter space of these theories where constraints from both solar system experiments and binary-pulsar observations are satisfied, we show that binaries of neutron stars present marked differences from General Relativity in both the late-inspiral and merger phases. In particular, phenomena related to the spontaneous scalarization of isolated neutron stars take place in the late stages of the evolution of binary systems, with important effects in the ensuing dynamics. We comment on the relevance of our results for the upcoming Advanced LIGO/Virgo detectors.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/52a5f7db80791fd17ae823f261fcd29fa15fa36d

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Citations in the corpus

Stellar structure models in modified theories of gravity: Lessons and challenges (2019, unknown): “[386] simulate a binary merger of unequal mass neutron stars described by polytropic EOS (46) with Γ = 2 and K = 123M2 ⊙ (GR: M⋆ ≈ 1.”
Testing Relativistic Gravity with Radio Pulsars (2014, background): “Also, there is the possibility of the occurrence of effects like dynamical scalarization that, depending on the specifics of the theory and the masses, could start to influence the merger at f < fICO [101], and consequently limit the validity of (37) to a smaller frequency”
Unveiling the gravitational universe at μ-Hz frequencies (2019, background): “black holes [27, 283] and neutron stars [28, 197, 279] can acquire scalar charges, even in a nonperturbative way [86, 94, 238, 240].”
Gravitational waves from neutron star mergers and their relation to the nuclear equation of state (2019, background): “re severely limited, also by observations of GWs from mergers of binary black holes [87] and NSs [32], and because numerical simulations of BNS mergers in alternative theories of gravity are very few [88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97]. 5See Sect. 2.4. 4 105, 106, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126] ”
Science case for the Einstein telescope (2019, background): “en the orbital velocity v˝c. This can happen for instance in some scalar-tensor theories, through the phenomenon of spontaneous and induced scalarization [151,152], as well as dynamical scalarization [153]. These eects can indeed be constrained by GW observations, see [154] for a study with 2G detec”