Probing Extreme-density Matter with Gravitational-wave Observations of Binary Neutron Star Merger Remnants
Abstract
We present a proof-of-concept study, based on numerical-relativity simulations, of how gravitational waves (GWs) from neutron star merger remnants can probe the nature of matter at extreme densities. Phase transitions and extra degrees of freedom can emerge at densities beyond those reached during the inspiral, and typically result in a softening of the equation of state (EOS). We show that such physical effects change the qualitative dynamics of the remnant evolution, but they are not identifiable as a signature in the GW frequency, with the exception of possible black hole formation effects. The EOS softening is, instead, encoded in the GW luminosity and phase and is in principle detectable up to distances of the order of several megaparsecs with advanced detectors and up to hundreds of megaparsecs with third-generation detectors. Probing extreme-density matter will require going beyond the current paradigm and developing a more holistic strategy for modeling and analyzing postmerger GW signals.
Additional Information
© 2017 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2017 May 4; revised 2017 May 24; accepted 2017 June 2; published 2017 June 14. We thank S. Hild for the ET-D noise curve data and the anonymous referee for useful comments, and we acknowledge useful discussions with A. Burrows, T. Dietrich, S. Marka, L. Rezzolla, B. S. Sathyaprakash, and K. Takami. D.R. gratefully acknowledges support from the Schmidt Fellowship, the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and the Max-Planck/Princeton Center (MPPC) for Plasma Physics (NSF PHY-1523261). C.D.O. was partially supported by NSF awards CAREER PHY-1151197, PHY-1404569, and TCAN AST-1333520, and by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation. The simulations were performed on NSF XSEDE (TG-PHY160025), and on NSF/NCSA Blue Waters (NSF PRAC ACI-1440083).Attached Files
Published - Radice_2017_ApJL_842_L10.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 78267
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170616-100047138
- Schmidt Fellowship
- Sherman Fairchild Foundation
- NSF
- PHY-1523261
- NSF
- PHY-1151197
- NSF
- PHY-1404569
- NSF
- AST-1333520
- NSF
- TG-PHY160025
- NSF
- ACI-1440083
- Created
-
2017-06-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- TAPIR, Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics