Equation of state sensitivities when inferring neutron star and dense matter properties
By S. K. Greif, Geert Raaijmakers, K. Hebeler, A. Schwenk, A. Watts. Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2018
135 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Understanding the dense matter equation of state at extreme conditions is an important open problem. Astrophysical observations of neutron stars promise to solve this, with Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer poised to make precision measurements of mass and radius for several stars using the waveform modelling technique. What has been less clear, however, is how these mass–radius measurements might translate into equation of state constraints and what are the associated equation of state sensitivities. We use Bayesian inference to explore and contrast the constraints that would result from different choices for the equation of state parametrization; comparing the well-established piecewise polytropic parametrization to one based on physically motivated assumptions for the speed of sound in dense matter. We also compare the constraints resulting from Bayesian inference to those from simple compatibility cuts. We find that the choice of equation of state parametrization and particularly its prior assumptions can have a significant effect on the inferred global mass–radius relation and the equation of state constraints. Our results point to important sensitivities when inferring neutron star and dense matter properties. This applies also to inferences from gravitational wave observations.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Geophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a1a32edb0077f99dd7c0e3c7cb66f0625896aac4
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Citations in the corpus
- Constraining the Dense Matter Equation of State with Joint Analysis of NICER and LIGO/Virgo Measurements (2019, methodology): “…distinct parameterizations are considered: a three-piece polytropic (PP) model with varying transition densities between the polytropes (Hebeler et al. 2013), and a speed of sound (CS) model based on physical considerations both at nuclear and high densities (Greif et al. 2019).”
- A NICER View of PSR J0030+0451: Implications for the Dense Matter Equation of State (2019, methodology): “We note that the bimodality observed in the prior in Greif et al. (2019) has been smoothed out by the addition of the continuous matching.”
- Constraining the Neutron Star Mass–Radius Relation and Dense Matter Equation of State with NICER. I. The Millisecond Pulsar X-Ray Data Set (2019, background): “This connection between the two relations can, in principle, be exploited via astrophysical observations to derive tight constraints on these parameters in any given parameterization of the EoS (see, e.g., Greif et al. 2019; Miller et al. 2019a, and references therein).”
- A NICER View of PSR J0030+0451: Millisecond Pulsar Parameter Estimation (2019, methodology): “In any case, care is required in both overall approach and the selection of (interior source matter and exterior spacetime) model parameterization and priors (Riley et al. 2018; Raaijmakers et al. 2018; Greif et al. 2019; Carney et al. 2018; Landry & Essick 2019).”
- PSR J0030+0451 Mass and Radius from NICER Data and Implications for the Properties of Neutron Star Matter (2019, methodology): “We caution, though, that as has been emphasized by Greif et al. (2019) and others, the constraints on the EoS derived from a given set of observations depend somewhat on the parameterization chosen for the EoS.”
- On the Sound Speed in Neutron Stars (2022, background): “…(2020), which avoids discontinuities in the sound speed as those appearing in a piecewise polytropic parameterization Most et al. (2018b) (see also alternatives that guarantee smoothness, like the spectral approach of Lindblom & Indik 2012, or the Gaussian parameterizations by Greif et al. 2019).”