TAPIR Seminar

In person: 370 Cahill. To Join via Zoom: 851 0756 7442

Abstract: Observations of neutron stars and the precise measurement of their macroscopic properties have provided valuable insights into fundamental physics, both by constraining the behavior of nuclear matter under extreme conditions and by enabling tests of general relativity in the strong-field regime. In this context, equation-of-state-insensitive or "quasi-universal" relations between key observables, such as the compactness, dimensionless static tidal deformability, and moment of inertia, play a crucial role in connecting different measurable observables while minimizing uncertainties due to the yet unknown equation-of-state. In this talk, I will present a new quasi-universal relations between the static, dimensionless tidal deformability (\Lambda^(0)) and its leading-order dynamical correction (\Lambda^(2)), as well as between \Lambda^(0) and a combination of these parameters (\sqrt(\Lambda^(0)/\Lambda^(2))), obtained from the small-frequency expansion of the relativistic tidal response. We test these relations across a representative set of 59 equations of state, finding that the equation-of-state dependence does not exceed ~5% for the \Lambda^(0)--\Lambda^(2) relation and ~2.8% for the \Lambda^(0)--\sqrt(\Lambda^(0)/\Lambda^(2)) relation. This indicates a high degree of universality and offers a simplified framework for incorporating dynamical tidal effects into gravitational-wave modeling. Furthermore, we compare the dynamical tidal response against different recent strategies (a Taylor expansion and a one-mode approximation) to model the dynamical tide. We find that both models are capable of capturing the frequency-dependent behavior of the dynamical tidal deformability, with the one-mode approximation agreeing better with the dynamical response than the Taylor expansion in most of the parameter space.