Pre/Post-Merger Consistency Test for Gravitational Signals from Binary Neutron Star Mergers

Abstract

Gravitational waves from binary neutron star (BNS) mergers can constrain nuclear models, predicting their equation of state (EOS). Matter effects on the inspiral-merger signal are encoded in the multipolar tidal polarizability parameters, whose leading order combination is sufficient to capture, with high accuracy, the key features of the merger waveform. Similar EOS-insensitive relations exist for the post-merger signal and can be used to model the emissions from the remnant. Several works suggested that the appearance of new degrees of freedom in high-density post-merger matter can be inferred by observing a violation of these EOS-insensitive relations. Here, we demonstrate a Bayesian method to test such an EOS-insensitive relation between the tidal polarizability parameters (or any other equivalent parameter) and the dominant post-merger frequency using information from the pre-and-post-merger signal. Technically, the method is similar to the inspiral-merger-ringdown consistency tests of General Relativity with binary black holes. However, differently from the latter, BNS pre/post-merger consistency tests are conceptually less informative and they only address the consistency of the assumed EOS-insensitive relation. Specifically, we discuss how such tests cannot conclusively discriminate between an EOS without respecting such a relation and the appearance of new degrees of freedom (or phase transitions) in high-density matter.

Keywords

• gravitational waves
• compact binary mergers
• neutron stars
• equation of state
• nuclear matter