Authors Referees APS Members |
December 2007, to be published in Physical Review D15
Constraining neutron-star tidal Love numbers with gravitational-wave detectors
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 $400{\,}{\rm Hz}$, where corrections to the internal-structure signal are less than $10 \%$. For an inspiral of two non-spinning $1.4M_{\odot}$ neutron stars at a distance of $50$ Megaparsecs, LIGO II detectors will be able to constrain $\lambda$ to $\lambda \leqslant 2.0 \times 10^{37} {\rm g}{\,}{\rm cm}^2{\rm s}^2 $ with $90\%$ confidence. Fully relativistic stellar models show that the corresponding constraint on radius $R$ for $1.4M_{\odot}$ neutron stars would be $R \leqslant 13.6 {\,}{\rm km} {\;}\left(15.3{\,} {\rm km} \right)$ for a $n=0.5$ $\left(n=1.0\right)$ polytrope with equation of state $p \propto \rho^{1 + 1/n}$. © 2008 The American Physical Society.
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