Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1701.03797

Upper limit set by causality on the tidal deformability of a neutron star

Eric D. Van Oeveren·John L. Friedman
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

A principal goal of gravitational-wave astronomy is to constrain the neutron star equation of state (EOS) by measuring the tidal deformability of neutron stars. The tidally induced departure of the waveform from that of point-particle (or spinless binary black hole (BBH)) increases with the stiffness of the EOS. We show that causality (the requirement that the speed of sound is less than the speed of light for a perfect fluid satisfying a one-parameter equation of state) places an upper bound on tidal deformability as a function of mass. Like the upper mass limit, the limit on deformabity is obtained by using an EOS with $v_{sound} = c$ for high densities and matching to a low density (candidate) EOS at a matching density of order nuclear saturation density. We use these results and those of [B.D. Lackey et al., Phys. Rev. D 89, 043009 (2014)] to estimate the resulting upper limit on the gravitational-wave phase shift of a black hole-neutron star (BHNS) binary relative to a BBH. Even for assumptions weak enough to allow an maximum mass of $4\ M_\odot$ (a match at nuclear saturation density to an unusually stiff low-density candidate EOS), the upper limit on dimensionless tidal deformability is stringent. It leads to a still more stringent estimated upper limit on the maximum tidally induced phase shift prior to merger. We comment in an appendix on the relation between causality, the condition $v_{sound} < c$, and the condition $dp/d\epsilon < 1$ for the effective EOS governing the equilibrium star.

Explore related subjects

gr-qcastro-ph.HEnucl-th

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Eric D. Van Oeveren, John L. Friedman. 2017-01-13. Upper limit set by causality on the tidal deformability of a neutron star. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.95.083014

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Electrovacuum Black Hole Uniqueness

We prove the black hole uniqueness conjecture in the axially symmetric, stationary, electrovacuum setting, subject to the refined asymptotic analysis of the associated singular harmonic maps, which includes an analyticity hypothesis at the axes. More precisely, it is shown that any asymptotically flat solution of the Einstein--Maxwell equations in this class, with more than one black hole horizon component is either: Majumdar--Papapetrou, up to a duality rotation, in which case all logarithmic angle defects vanish, or every finite axis rod logarithmic angle defect is strictly negative and hence every interaction force is strictly attractive. The proof extends the singular harmonic map method used for vacuum Kerr uniqueness in [18].

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Constraining Modified Mass-to-Horizon Cosmology Through Primordial Inflationary Observables

We investigate slow-roll inflation in a modified cosmological framework inspired by a generalized mass-to-horizon relation (MHR), $M=\gamma {c^2 L^n}/{G}$, where $n$ is a real parameter and $\gamma$ a dimensional constant. Using Padmanabhan's emergence paradigm, we derive the modified Friedmann equations for a flat FRW universe and analyze the dynamics of a canonical scalar field (inflaton) under the slow-roll approximation. We study the resulting inflationary phenomenology for power-law and Starobinsky potentials. For power-law potentials, the MHR modification fails to reconcile these models with current CMB constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. In contrast, Starobinsky inflation exhibits significant sensitivity to deviations from $n=1$. A perturbative analysis ($n=1+\Delta$) yields corrections to inflationary observables. We observe that the scalar power-spectrum normalization, under a fixed-Starobinsky prescription, imposes the stringent constraint $0.960 \lesssim n \lesssim 1.040$ for $N=60$ efolds. This is considerably tighter than spectral-index bounds. Our results establish inflation, particularly Starobinsky-like models, as a sensitive probe of generalized horizon thermodynamics and departures from standard MHR scaling.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

gr-qc↗