2007/09/30 by Eanna E. Flanagan, Tanja Hinderer · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.77.021502
published as Phys.Rev.D77:021502,2008 · 4 pages, 2 figures, minor corrections
arxiv created 2007/12/07 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
Ground-based gravitational wave detectors may be able to constrain the nuclear equation of state using the early, low frequency portion of the signal of detected neutron star - neutron star inspirals. In this early adiabatic regime, the influence of a neutron star's internal structure on the phase of the waveform depends only on a single parameter lambda of the star related to its tidal Love number, namely the ratio of the induced quadrupole moment to the perturbing tidal gravitational field. We analyze the information obtainable from gravitational wave frequencies smaller than a cutoff frequency of 400 Hz, where corrections to the internal-structure signal are less than 10 percent. For an inspiral of two non-spinning 1.4 solar mass neutron stars at a distance of 50 Mpc, LIGO II detectors will be able to constrain lambda to lambda < 2.0 1037 g cm2 s2 with 90% confidence. Fully relativistic stellar models show that the corresponding constraint on radius R for 1.4 solar mass neutron stars would be R < 13.6 km (15.3 km) for a n=0.5 (n=1.0) polytrope.