Effects of neutron-star dynamic tides on gravitational waveforms within the effective-one-body approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new effective-one-body gravitational waveform model that incorporates dynamic neutron-star tides and merger signals, improving the accuracy of gravitational wave analysis for neutron-star binaries.

Contribution

The authors develop the first waveform model including dynamic tides and merger signals, enhancing the modeling of neutron-star binary gravitational waves.

Findings

Model matches numerical relativity simulations over 24 cycles

Dynamic tides significantly affect gravitational waveforms

Dependence of matter effects on tidal deformability and oscillation frequency

Abstract

Extracting the unique information on ultradense nuclear matter from the gravitational waves emitted by merging, neutron-star binaries requires robust theoretical models of the signal. We develop a novel effective-one-body waveform model that includes, for the first time, dynamic (instead of only adiabatic) tides of the neutron star, as well as the merger signal for neutron-star--black-hole binaries. We demonstrate the importance of the dynamic tides by comparing our model against new numerical-relativity simulations of nonspinning neutron-star--black-hole binaries spanning more than 24 gravitational-wave cycles, and to other existing numerical simulations for double neutron-star systems. Furthermore, we derive an effective description that makes explicit the dependence of matter effects on two key parameters: tidal deformability and fundamental oscillation frequency.