Phenomenological model of gravitational self-force enhanced tides in inspiralling binary neutron stars

TL;DR

This paper introduces PhenomGSF, a new efficient and accurate phenomenological tidal phase model for neutron star inspirals, incorporating gravitational self-force effects to improve gravitational wave analysis and neutron star matter constraints.

Contribution

The paper presents PhenomGSF, a novel frequency-domain tidal waveform model that includes self-force informed effects, applicable to a wide range of neutron star binaries without assuming universal relations.

Findings

PhenomGSF accurately matches TEOBResumS and numerical relativity waveforms.

It effectively reanalyzes GW170817 data, demonstrating practical utility.

The model is computationally efficient and versatile for diverse neutron star physics.

Abstract

Gravitational waves from inspiralling binary neutron stars provide unique access to ultra-dense nuclear matter and offer the ability to constrain the currently unknown neutron star equation-of-state through tidal measurements. This, however, requires the availability of accurate and efficient tidal waveform models. In this paper we present PhenomGSF, a new phenomenological tidal phase model for the inspiral of neutron stars in the frequency-domain, which captures the gravitational self-force informed tidal contributions of the time-domain effective-one-body model TEOBResumS. PhenomGSF is highly faithful and computationally efficient, and by choosing a modular approach, it can be used in conjunction with any frequency-domain binary black hole waveform model to generate the complete phase for a binary neutron star inspiral. PhenomGSF is valid for neutron star binaries with unequal masses and mass ratios between 1 and 3, and dimensionless tidal deformabilities up to 5000. Furthermore, PhenomGSF does not assume universal relations or parameterised equations-of-state, hence allowing for exotic matter analyses and beyond standard model physics investigations. We demonstrate the efficacy and accuracy of our model through comparisons against TEOBResumS, numerical relativity waveforms and full Bayesian inference, including a reanalysis of the binary neutron star observation GW170817.