Impact and detectability of spin-tidal couplings in neutron star inspirals

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spin-tidal couplings affect gravitational wave signals from neutron star mergers, showing that neglecting these effects can lead to significant errors in parameter estimation for future detectors.

Contribution

It introduces the importance of rotational tidal Love numbers in waveform models and demonstrates their potential measurability with third-generation gravitational wave detectors.

Findings

Neglecting tidal-rotation couplings causes significant parameter estimation errors.

Rotational tidal Love numbers could be measured by next-generation detectors.

Current models need refinement to include spin-tidal effects for accurate analysis.

Abstract

The gravitational wave signal from a binary neutron star merger carries the imprint of the deformability properties of the coalescing bodies, and then of the equation of state of neutron stars. In current models of the waveforms emitted in these events, the contribution of tidal deformation is encoded in a set of parameters, the tidal Love numbers. More refined models include tidal-rotation couplings, described by an additional set of parameters, the rotational tidal Love numbers, which appear in the waveform at $6.5$ post-Newtonian order. For neutron stars with spins as large as $\sim0.1$, we show that neglecting tidal-rotation couplings may lead to a significant error in the parameter estimation by third-generation gravitational wave detectors. By performing a Fisher matrix analysis we assess the measurability of rotational tidal Love numbers, showing that their contribution in the waveform could be measured by third-generation detectors. Our results suggest that current models of tidal deformation in late inspiral should be improved in order to avoid waveform systematics and extract reliable information from gravitational wave signals observed by next generation detectors.