September 15th
when: Tuesday 15/09/2020, 12:45
where: KE D201 and Zoom meeting!
speaker: Elias Most
title: Neutron Star Mergers: What recent gravitational wave events have taught us about the equation of state.
abstract:
To date we have observed two neutron star merger gravitational wave events, GW170817 and GW190425. Recently, also the detection of another event, GW190814, was reported that might have contained either the heaviest neutron star or the lightest black hole ever observed. The gravitational wave signal carried a multitude of information about the underlying equation of state of nuclear matter, which so far is not precisely known for densities above nuclear saturation. In this talk, I will review what we have learned so far about the equation of state from those detections. I will then highlight what future observations could tell us about the existence of first-order phase transitions to quark matter, which might appear in the post-merger phase. Finally, I will comment on the possibility of having a rapidly rotating neutron star as the light companion in GW190814.