Impact of O4 future detection on the determination of the dense matter equations of state

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how upcoming O4 gravitational wave observations will enhance the ability to distinguish between different neutron star equations of state, significantly improving constraints compared to previous observations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that O4 observations will greatly improve the precision of neutron star equation of state measurements and highlights the impact of detector noise on these analyses.

Findings

O4 can improve tidal deformability measurement accuracy by a factor of 7.

Single GW170817-like events within 100 Mpc will significantly constrain neutron star EoS.

Detector noise substantially affects the probability density of tidal deformability.

Abstract

In view of the next LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Observing period O4 (to start in Spring 2023), we address the question of the ability of the interferometers network to discriminate among different neutron stars equation of states better than what was possible with the observation of the binary neutron stars merger GW170817. We show that the observation of an event similar to GW170817 during O4 would allow to resolve the dimensionless effective tidal deformability $\tilde{\Lambda}$ within an uncertainty 7 times better than the one obtained in O2. Thanks to the expected increase in sensitivities, we show that any GW170817-like single-event within a distance of 100 Mpc would imply significantly improved constraints of the neutron stars equations of state. We also illustrate the important impact of the noise in the analysis of the signal, showing how it can impact the effective tidal deformability probability density function for large signal-to-noise ratio.