The effect of spin mismodeling on gravitational-wave measurements of the binary neutron star mass distribution

TL;DR

This paper shows that mismodeling neutron star spins in gravitational-wave data analysis can bias the inferred mass distribution, affecting astrophysical conclusions, especially with limited detections.

Contribution

It demonstrates how incorrect assumptions about spin distributions bias mass measurements and recommends using flexible spin priors to avoid such biases.

Findings

Low-spin priors cause overestimation of maximum neutron star mass.

Incorrect spin assumptions bias the minimum mass estimation.

Biases occur even with as few as six detections.

Abstract

The binary neutron star (BNS) mass distribution measured with gravitational-wave observations has the potential to reveal information about the dense matter equation of state, supernova physics, the expansion rate of the universe, and tests of General Relativity. As most current gravitational-wave analyses measuring the BNS mass distribution do not simultaneously fit the spin distribution, the implied population-level spin distribution is the same as the spin prior applied when analyzing individual sources. In this work, we demonstrate that introducing a mismatch between the implied and true BNS spin distributions can lead to biases in the inferred mass distribution. This is due to the strong correlations between the measurements of the mass ratio and spin components aligned with the orbital angular momentum for individual sources. We find that applying a low-spin prior which excludes the true spin magnitudes of some sources in the population leads to significantly overestimating the maximum neutron star mass and underestimating the minimum neutron star mass at the population level with as few as six BNS detections. The safest choice of spin prior that does not lead to biases in the inferred mass distribution is one which allows for high spin magnitudes and tilts misaligned with the orbital angular momentum.