CCA Colloquium: Pedro Espino

CCA Colloquium: Pedro Espino

Title: Constraining high-density deconfinement phase transitions with gravitational wave spectroscopy of binary neutron star mergers

Abstract: The determination of the state of matter formed in binary neutron star (BNS) mergers is one of the most pressing scientific objectives of multimessenger astronomy. It remains an open question whether the conditions for a high-density quark deconfinement phase transition (PT) are reached during BNS mergers. We use numerical relativity simulations of BNS mergers to show that hadron-quark PTs can be probed using multimodal post merger gravitational wave (GW) spectroscopy. Hadron-quark PTs suppress the one-armed spiral instability in the remnant. This is manifested in an anti-correlation between the energy carried in the l=2, m=1 GW mode and energy density gap which separates the two phases. Consequently, measurement of the signal-to-noise ratios of the l=2, m=1 and l=2, m=2 GW modes could constrain the energy density gap of the PT.