Abstract
The late inspiral, merger, and ringdown of a black hole-neutron star (BHNS) system can provide information about the neutron-star equation of state (EOS). Candidate EOSs can be approximated by a parametrized piecewise-polytropic EOS above nuclear density, matched to a fixed low-density EOS; and we report results from a large set of BHNS inspiral simulations that systematically vary two parameters. To within the accuracy of the simulations, we find that, apart from the neutron-star mass, a single physical parameter , describing its deformability, can be extracted from the late inspiral, merger, and ringdown waveform. This parameter is related to the radius, mass, and Love number, , of the neutron star by , and it is the same parameter that determines the departure from point-particle dynamics during the early inspiral. Observations of gravitational waves from BHNS inspiral thus restrict the EOS to a surface of constant in the parameter space, thickened by the measurement error. Using various configurations of a single Advanced LIGO detector, we find that or equivalently can be extracted to 10–50% accuracy from single events for mass ratios of and 3 at a distance of 100 Mpc, while with the proposed Einstein Telescope, EOS parameters can be extracted to accuracy an order of magnitude better.
7 More- Received 15 September 2011
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.85.044061
© 2012 American Physical Society