Measuring neutron-star properties via gravitational waves from binary mergers

TL;DR

This paper shows that the peak frequency of gravitational waves after neutron star mergers correlates strongly with the stars' internal properties, enabling constraints on the nuclear equation of state from observations.

Contribution

It establishes a robust correlation between postmerger GW peak frequency and neutron star properties, facilitating EoS constraints from GW data.

Findings

Strong correlation between GW peak frequency and NS EoS properties

Detection likelihood with Advanced LIGO within about a year

Postmerger GW signals can significantly constrain nuclear physics

Abstract

We demonstrate by a large set of merger simulations for symmetric binary neutron stars (NSs) that there is a tight correlation between the frequency peak of the postmerger gravitational-wave (GW) emission and the physical properties of the nuclear equation of state (EoS), e.g. expressed by the radius of the maximum-mass Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkhoff configuration. Therefore, a single measurement of the peak frequency of the postmerger GW signal will constrain the NS EoS significantly. For plausible optimistic merger-rate estimates a corresponding detection with Advanced LIGO is likely to happen within an operation time of roughly a year.