Wigner Virgo group Projects B

Neutron stars are unique and fascinating astrophysical objects representing an extreme region of physics. These objects with high densities and strong magnetic fields produce large curvatures in spacetime. Together with black holes NSs are ideal sources for transient GW events. Black holes; however, represent simple objects compared to NS due to the small number of parameters needed for their characterization, e.g. their masses and spins. These characteristics for NSs are depending on the inner structure, their equation of state, representing much higher degrees of freedom. The observation of NS characteristics allows the detailed investigation of their inner structure and the behaviour of particles under extreme conditions. With the continuously increasing sensitivity of GW observatories these additional effects will play an important role in future studies.

Deformation parameter

One of the key target of GW observations is to measure the intrinsic parameters of colliding NSs. The most interesting parameters are the masses, spins and deformation parameters (or Love number) which are under thorough investigations. These source parameters give significant contributions at various stages of the binary evolution. While mass and spin effects are universal for black holes and NSs, the deformation parameter is applied for the later. The deformation parameter, which describes the distortion of the NS in the strong gravitational field of its companion enters the description at high post-Newtonian levels.

Observable parameters of neutron stars

Relativistic objects can be characterized by different source parameters with the mass and rotation parameter themselves as examples. Beyond these common source parameters, other characteristics of neutron stars can be relevant in their description, e.g. moments of inertia, minimal rotational period. We will study these source parameters and their dependence of the inner structure of NSs and determine observable parameters for these sources.