ROXAS: a new pseudospectral non-linear code for general relativistic oscillations of fast rotating isolated neutron stars

TL;DR

ROXAS is a lightweight pseudospectral code designed for simulating oscillations of rotating neutron stars, aiding gravitational wave predictions by accurately extracting mode frequencies and supporting various oscillation modes.

Contribution

The paper introduces ROXAS, a new pseudospectral code that models rotating neutron star oscillations with surface tracking and compares results with semi-analytic methods.

Findings

Successfully recovers spherically symmetric modes

Accurately extracts oscillation mode frequencies

Supports fast, rigidly rotating neutron stars

Abstract

Next-generation gravitational wave detectors are expected to increase their sensitivity in the kHz band where binary neutron star remnants are expected to emit. In this context, robust predictions of oscillation modes of the post-merger object are desirable. To that end, we present here our code \texttt{ROXAS} that is aimed at simulating isolated rotating neutron stars. It is based on our previously published formalism relying on primitive variables, along with the extended conformal-flatness condition formulation of Einstein equations. The equations are written under a well-balanced formulation. The code uses pseudospectral methods for both the metric and the hydrodynamics. Since standard test beds were already presented in a previous paper, we here mainly focus on presenting the numerical ingredients of \texttt{ROXAS}, as well as on the frequency extraction for axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric modes. We compare our results with semi-analytic perturbative methods. Spherically symmetric modes are also recovered. The code currently supports fast, rigidly rotating isolated neutron stars, described with a cold equation of state. A notable feature of the code is its ability to follow the surface of the star at every step. It is very lightweight and can be run on office computers.