We propose a new numerical method to compute quasi-equilibrium sequences of general relativistic irrotational binary neutron star systems. It is a good approximation to assume that (1) the binary star system is irrotational, i.e. the vorticity of the flow field inside component stars vanishes everywhere (irrotational flow), and (2) the binary star system is in quasi-equilibrium, for an inspiraling binary neutron star system just before the coalescence as a result of gravitational wave emission. We can introduce the velocity potential for such an irrotational flow field, which satisfies an elliptic partial differential equation (PDE) with a Neumann type boundary condition at the stellar surface. For a treatment of general relativistic gravity, we use the Wilson-Mathews formulation, which assumes conformal flatness for spatial components of metric. In this formulation, the basic equations are expressed by a system of elliptic PDEs. We have developed a method to solve these PDEs with appropriate boundary conditions. The method is based on the established prescription for computing equilibrium states of rapidly rotating axisymmetric neutron stars or Newtonian binary systems. We have checked the reliability of our new code by comparing our results with those of other computations available. We have also performed several convergence tests. By using this code, we have obtained quasi-equilibrium sequences of irrotational binary star systems with strong gravity as models for final states of real evolution of binary neutron star systems just before coalescence. Analysis of our quasi-equilibrium sequences of binary star systems shows that the systems may not suffer from dynamical instability of the orbital motion and that the maximum density does not increase as the binary separation decreases.

• Received 20 August 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.61.124023