Gravitomagnetic quasi-normal modes of neutron stars are resonantly excited by tidal effects during a binary inspiral, leading to a potentially measurable effect in the gravitational-wave signal. We take an important step towards incorporating these effects in waveform models by developing a relativistic effective action for the gravitomagnetic dynamics that clarifies a number of subtleties. Working in the slow-rotation limit, we first consider the post-Newtonian approximation and explicitly derive the effective action from the equations of motion. We demonstrate that this formulation opens a way to compute mode frequencies, yields insights into the relevant matter variables, and elucidates the role of a shift symmetry of the fluid properties under a displacement of the gravitomagnetic mode amplitudes. We then construct a fully relativistic action based on the symmetries and a power counting scheme. This action involves four coupling coefficients that depend on the internal structure of the neutron star and characterize the key matter parameters imprinted in the gravitational waves. We show that, after fixing one of the coefficients by normalization, the other three directly involve the two kinds of gravitomagnetic Love numbers (static and irrotational), and the mode frequencies. We discuss several interesting features and dynamical consequences of this action, and analyze the frequency-domain response function (the frequency-dependent ratio between the induced flux quadrupole and the external gravitomagnetic field), and a corresponding Love operator representing the time-domain response. Our results provide the foundation for deriving precision predictions of gravitomagnetic effects, and the nuclear physics they encode, for gravitational-wave astronomy.
Download