Spectral properties of the post-merger gravitational-wave signal from binary neutron stars

By K. Takami, Luciano Rezzolla, Luca Baiotti. 2014

142 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Extending previous work by a number of authors, we have recently presented a new approach in which the detection of gravitational waves from merging neutron star binaries can be used to determine the equation of state of matter at nuclear density and hence the structure of neutron stars. In particular, after performing a large number of numerical-relativity simulations of binaries with nuclear equations of state, we have found that the post-merger emission is characterized by two distinct and robust spectral features. While the high-frequency peak was already shown to be associated with the oscillations of the hypermassive neutron star produced by the merger and to depend on the equation of state, we have highlighted that the low-frequency peak is related to the merger process and to the total compactness of the stars in the binary. This relation is essentially universal and provides a powerful tool to set tight constraints on the equation of state. We here provide additional information on the extensive analysis performed, illustrating the methods used, the tests considered, as well as the robustness of the results. We also discuss additional relations that can be deduced when exploring the data and how these correlate with various properties of the binary. Finally, we present a simple mechanical toy model that explains the main spectral features of the post-merger signal and can even reproduce analytically the complex waveforms emitted right after the merger.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Geophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/98e0f04b661db84d57a79f04352efa57401433dd

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Citations in the corpus

Maximum mass, moment of inertia and compactness of relativistic stars (2016, background): “…of those works that have looked at the existence of universality in merging systems of neutron-star binaries (Read et al. 2013; Maselli et al. 2013; Takami et al. 2014, 2015; Bernuzzi et al. 2014), all of the work done so far on universal relations in isolated relativistic stars has concentrated…”
The Nuclear Symmetry Energy (2016, background): “Recently, the authors of ref.[147] found that the post-merger emission is characterized also by a low-frequency peak, which is related to the total compactness of the stars in the binary.”
Using Gravitational-wave Observations and Quasi-universal Relations to Constrain the Maximum Mass of Neutron Stars (2017, background): “This imprint, such as the one associated with the GW frequency at maximum amplitude (Read et al. 2013; Bernuzzi et al. 2014; Takami et al. 2015), can even be quasi-universal in the sense that it depends only weakly on the EOS.”
Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory: A kilohertz-band gravitational-wave detector in the global network (2020, background): “The spectral content of the post-merger gravitational waves contains information about the neutron star equation of state [88].”