No Arabic abstract
Neutron stars are expected to have a tight relation between their moment of inertia ($I$), tidal deformability ($lambda$, which is related to the Love number), and rotational mass quadrupole moment ($Q$) that is nearly independent of the unknown equation of state (EoS) of cold dense matter. These and similar relations are often called universal, and they have been used for various applications including analysis of gravitational wave data. We extend these studies using piecewise polytropic representations of dense matter, including for so-called twin stars that have a second branch of stability at high central densities. The second-branch relations are less tight, by a factor of $sim 3$, than the relations found in the first stable branch. We find that the relations on both branches become tighter when we increase the lower limit to the maximum mass for the EoS under consideration. We also propose new empirical relations between $I$, $lambda$, $Q$, and the complex frequency $omega=omega_R+iomega_I$ of the fundamental axial $w$-mode, and find that they are comparably tight to the I-Love-Q correlations.
Gravitational wave observations of GW170817 placed bounds on the tidal deformabilities of compact stars allowing one to probe equations of state for matter at supranuclear densities. Here we design new parametrizations for hybrid hadron-quark equations of state, that give rise to low-mass twin stars, and test them against GW170817. We find that GW170817 is consistent with the coalescence of a binary hybrid star--neutron star. We also test and find that the I-Love-Q relations for hybrid stars in the third family agree with those for purely hadronic and quark stars within $sim 3%$ for both slowly and rapidly rotating configurations, implying that these relations can be used to perform equation-of-state independent tests of general relativity and to break degeneracies in gravitational waveforms for hybrid stars in the third family as well.
We relate the fundamental quadrupolar fluid mode of isolated non-rotating NSs and the dominant oscillation frequency of neutron star merger remnants. Both frequencies individually are known to correlate with certain stellar parameters like radii or the tidal deformability, which we further investigate by constructing fit formulae and quantifying the scatter of the data points from those relations. Furthermore, we compare how individual data points deviate from the corresponding fit to all data points. Considering this point-to-point scatter we uncover a striking similarity between the frequency deviations of perturbative data for isolated NSs and of oscillation frequencies of rapidly rotating, hot, massive merger remnants. The correspondence of frequency deviations in these very different stellar systems points to an underlying mechanism and EoS information being encoded in the frequency deviation. We trace the frequency scatter back to deviations of the tidal Love number from an average tidal Love number for a given stellar compactness. Our results thus indicate a possibility to break the degeneracy between NS radii, tidal deformability and tidal Love number. We also relate frequency deviations to the derivative of the tidal deformability with respect to mass. Our findings generally highlight a possibility to improve GW asteroseismology relations where the systematic behavior of frequency deviations is employed to reduce the scatter in such relationships and consequently increase the measurement accuracy. In addition, we relate the f-mode frequency of static stars and the dominant GW frequency of merger remnants. We find an analytic mapping to connect the masses of both stellar systems, which yields particularly accurate mass-independent relations between both frequencies and between the postmerger frequency and the tidal deformability.
Quasi-universal relations connecting the tidal deformability and the quadrupole moment of individual neutron stars are predicted by theoretical computations, but have not been measured experimentally. However, such relations are employed during the interpretation of gravitational waves and, therefore, have a direct impact on the interpretation of real data. In this work, we study how quasi-universal relations can be tested and measured from gravitational wave signals connected to binary neutron star coalescences. We study a population of $120$ binary neutron star systems and find that Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo at design sensitivity could find possible deviations of predicted relations if the observed neutron stars are highly spinning. In the future, a network of third generation (3G) detectors will be able to even allow a measurement of quasi-universal relations. Thus, the outlined approach provides a new test of general relativity and nuclear physics predictions.
Axions and axion-like particles are a leading model for the dark matter in the Universe; therefore, dark matter halos may be boson stars in the process of collapsing. We examine a class of static boson stars with a non-minimal coupling to gravity. We modify the gravitational density of the boson field to be proportional to an arbitrary power of the modulus of the field, introducing a non-standard coupling. We find a class of solutions very similar to Newtonian polytropic stars that we denote quantum polytropes. These quantum polytropes are supported by a non-local quantum pressure and follow an equation very similar to the Lane-Emden equation for classical polytropes. Furthermore, we derive a simple condition on the exponent of the non-linear gravitational coupling, $alpha>8/3$, beyond which the equilibrium solutions are unstable.
We investigate the nature of low T/W dynamical instabilities in various ranges of the stiffness of the equation of state in differentially rotating stars. Here T is the rotational kinetic energy, while W the gravitational binding energy. We analyze these instabilities in both a linear perturbation analysis and a three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulation. An unstable normal mode of a differentially rotating star is detected by solving an eigenvalue problem along the equatorial plane of the star. The physical mechanism of low T/W dynamical instabilities is also qualitatively confirmed by a scattering of sound waves between corotation and the surface caused by the corotation barrier. Therefore, we can draw a picture of existing pulsation modes unstabilized due to an amplified reflection of sound waves from the corotation barrier. The feature in the eigenfrequency and eigenfunction of the unstable mode in the linear analysis roughly agrees with that in the three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulation in Newtonian gravity. Moreover, the nature of the eigenfunction that oscillates between corotation and the surface for an unstable star requires reinterpretation of pulsation modes in differentially rotating stars. Finally, we propose a manner by which to constrain the stiffness of the equation of state by the direct detection of mode decomposed gravitational waveforms.