Post-Merger Gravitational-Wave Uncertainties of Binary Neutron Stars under Multi-Messenger EOS Constraints

Abstract

The high-frequency gravitational waves emitted by a binary neutron star merger remnant carry information on matter at densities and temperatures beyond those reached in isolated neutron stars. We quantify how tightly current multi-messenger constraints already determine the dominant post-merger frequency $f_{2,\rm mean}$. Adopting a set of cold equations of state (EOSs) constrained jointly by gravitational-wave tidal deformability, NICER mass--radius measurements, massive-pulsar masses, chiral effective field theory at low density, and perturbative QCD at asymptotically high density, for each binary mass we select the softest and stiffest models of the multi-messenger posterior and follow their coalescence with fully general-relativistic hydrodynamics simulations. Together with a broad set of EOSs drawn from the literature ($82$ models in total), these simulations show that, once the binary mass and a single measure of the stellar compactness ($\Lambda$ or $R$) are held fixed, the residual spread of $f_{2,\rm mean}$ is only $\sim 100\,{\rm Hz}$, a factor of several below the $\gtrsim 500\,{\rm Hz}$ range spanned by an EOSs set including those already disfavored by the data. This tight calibration of the cold-matter prediction implies that a future high-frequency detection departing from it would point directly to additional physics, such as a hadron--quark transition occurring at finite temperature. We further confirm the quasi-universal relation $(f_1+f_3)/2 \approx f_{2,\rm mean}$ to within $\sim 116\,{\rm Hz}$, which provides a model-independent estimate of $f_{2,\rm mean}$ from the secondary spectral peaks.