Strengthening nuclear symmetry energy constraints using multiple resonant shattering flares of neutron stars with realistic mass uncertainties

Duncan Neill, David Tsang, William G. Newton

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Abstract

With current and planned gravitational-wave (GW) observing runs, coincident multimessenger timing of resonant shattering flares (RSFs) and GWs may soon allow for neutron star (NS) asteroseismology to be used to constrain the nuclear symmetry energy, an important property of fundamental nuclear physics that influences the composition and equation of state of NSs. In this work, we examine the effects of combining multiple RSF detections on these symmetry energy constraints, and consider how realistic uncertainties in the masses of the progenitor NSs may weaken them. We show that the detection of subsequent multimessenger events has the potential to substantially improve constraints beyond those obtained from the first, and that this improvement is insensitive to the mass of the NSs that produce the RSFs and its uncertainty. This sets these asteroseismic constraints apart from bulk NS properties such as radius, for which the NS mass is highly important, meaning that any multimessenger RSF and GW events can equally improve our knowledge of fundamental physics.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)827-840
Number of pages14
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume532
Issue number1
Early online date14 Jun 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2024

Data Availability Statement

The posterior samples generated for this work are available upon request. This work made use of EMCEE (Foreman-Mackey et al. 2013) version 3.1 and BILBY (Ashton et al. 2019) version 2.1.

Funding

This work used the Isambard 2 UK National Tier-2 HPC Service (http://gw4.ac.uk/isambard/) operated by GW4 and the UK Met Office, and funded by \u23290:funding-source 3:href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.13 039/501100000266\"\u232A EPSRC \u2329/0:funding-source\u232A (EP/T022078/1). The authors gratefully acknowledge the University of Bath's Research Computing Group (doi.org/10.15125/b6cd-s854) for their support in this work. DN and DT were supported by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/X001067/1) and the Ro yal Society (RGS/R1/231499). WGN was supported by NASA (80NSSC18K1019). We also thank Natalie Williams and Hannah Middleton for useful discussion about the usage of BILBY. This work used the Isambard 2 UK National Tier-2 HPC Service ( http://gw4.ac.uk/isambard/ ) operated by GW4 and the UK Met Office, and funded by EPSRC (EP/T022078/1). The authors gratefully acknowledge the University of Bath\u2019s Research Computing Group ( doi.org/10.15125/b6cd-s854 ) for their support in this work. DN and DT were supported by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/X001067/1) and the Royal Society (RGS/R1/231499). WGN was supported by NASA (80NSSC18K1019). We also thank Natalie Williams and Hannah Middleton for useful discussion about the usage of bilby .

FundersFunder number
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research CouncilEP/T022078/1
Science and Technology Facilities CouncilST/X001067/1
Royal SocietyRGS/R1/231499
National Aeronautics and Space Administration80NSSC18K1019

Keywords

  • dense matter
  • equation of state
  • gravitational waves
  • neutron star mergers
  • stars: neutron
  • stars: oscillations

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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