High-order effective-one-body tidal interactions and gravitational scattering

TL;DR

This paper enhances the effective-one-body formalism for neutron star interactions using advanced scattering results in post-Minkowskian gravity, improving agreement with numerical relativity data.

Contribution

It introduces a refined tidal sector in the EOB formalism incorporating next-to-next-to-leading PM-order effects, advancing modeling accuracy for neutron star scattering.

Findings

Improved agreement with numerical relativity data on neutron star scattering.

Enhanced EOB models with higher-order tidal effects.

Foundation for more accurate tidal modeling in gravitational wave physics.

Abstract

Using state-of-the-art scattering results in post-Minkowskian (PM) gravity, we improve the tidal sector of four different flavors of the effective-one-body (EOB) formalism. We notably explore both adiabatic and post-adiabatic gravitoelectric and gravitomagnetic quadrupolar tidal effects at the next-to-next-to-leading PM-order. When comparing the predictions of the so-constructed Lagrange-PM-tidal version of EOB to recent numerical-relativity data on the scattering of neutron stars, we find improved agreement with respect to existing EOB models and PM expansions. Our work lays the foundation for the development of an accurate tidal sector of the PM EOB models, and points out the need to explore improved resummation schemes in PN EOB for bound and circularized orbits.