Universe (Jun 2020)

Was GW170817 a Canonical Neutron Star Merger? Bayesian Analysis with a Third Family of Compact Stars

  • David Blaschke,
  • Alexander Ayriyan,
  • David Edwin Alvarez-Castillo,
  • Hovik Grigorian

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/universe6060081
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6, no. 6
p. 81

Abstract

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We investigate the possibility that GW170817 was not the merger of two conventional neutron stars (NS), but involved at least one if not two hybrid stars with a quark matter core that might even belong to a third family of compact stars. To this end, we develop a Bayesian analysis method for selecting the most probable equation of state (EoS) under a set of constraints from compact star physics, which now also include the tidal deformability from GW170817 and the first result for the mass and radius determination for PSR J0030+0451 by the NICER Collaboration. We apply this method for the first time to a two-parameter family of hybrid EoS based on the DD2 model with nucleonic excluded volume for hadronic matter and the color superconducting generalized nlNJL model for quark matter. The model has a variable onset density for deconfinement and can mimic the effects of pasta phases with the possibility of producing a third family of hybrid stars in the mass-radius diagram. The main findings of this study are that: (1) the presence of multiple configurations for a given mass (twins or even triples) corresponds to a set of disconnected lines in the Λ 1 – Λ 2 diagram of tidal deformabilities for binary mergers, so that merger events from the same mass range may result in a probability landscape with different peak positions; (2) the Bayesian analysis with the above observational constraints favors an early onset of the deconfinement transition, at masses of M onset ≤ 0.8 M ⊙ with an M–R relationship that in the range of observed neutron star masses is almost indistinguishable from that of a soft hadronic Akmal, Pandharipande, and Ravenhall (APR) EoS; (3) a few, yet fictitious measurements of the NICER experiment two times more accurate than the present value and a different mass and radius that would change the posterior likelihood so that hybrid EoS with a phase transition onset in the range M onset = 1.1–1.6 M ⊙ would be favored.

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