Long-Term Postmerger Simulations of Binary Neutron Star Coalescence: Formation of Toroidal Remnants and Gravitational Wave Afterglow

TL;DR

This study uses general-relativistic hydrodynamic simulations to explore the formation, oscillation, and gravitational wave signatures of long-lived, rapidly rotating neutron star remnants after binary mergers, revealing persistent features and new oscillation modes.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the long-term evolution and gravitational wave signals of postmerger neutron star remnants using high-resolution simulations with simplified physics.

Findings

Remnants form stable toroidal structures that oscillate quasi-periodically.

Persistent double peaks in gravitational wave spectra are observed.

A new low-frequency oscillation mode emerges around 100 ms post-merger.

Abstract

It has been estimated that a significant proportion of binary neutron star merger events produce long-lived massive remnants supported by differential rotation and subject to rotational instabilities. To examine formation and oscillation of rapidly rotating neutron stars (NS) after merger, we present an exploratory study of fully general-relativistic hydrodynamic simulations using the public code Einstein Toolkit. The attention is focused on qualitative aspects of long-term postmerger evolution. As simplified test models, we use a moderately stiff Gamma=2 ideal-fluid equation of state and unmagnetized irrotational equal-mass binaries with three masses well below the threshold for prompt collapse. Our high resolution simulations generate postmerger "ringdown" gravitational wave (GW) signals of 170 ms, sustained by rotating massive NS remnants without collapsing to black holes. We observe that the high-density double-core structure inside the remnants gradually turns into a quasi-axisymmetric toroidal shape. It oscillates in a quasi-periodic manner and shrinks in size due to gravitational radiation. In the GW spectrograms, dominant double peaks persist throughout the postmerger simulations and slowly drift to higher frequencies. A new low-frequency peak emerges at about 100 ms after merger, owing to the growth of GW-driven unstable oscillation modes. The long-term effect of grid resolution is also investigated using the same initial model. Moreover, we comment on physical conditions that are favorable for the transient toroidal configuration to form, and discuss implication of our findings on future GW observation targeting rapidly rotating NSs.