Speaker
Description
The observations of the gravitational wave signal GW170817 from a binary neutron star merger have marked the beginning of a new era in astrophysics. Such events offer unique opportunities to probe the properties of matter under conditions so extreme that they cannot be experimentally reproduced in terrestrial laboratories. However, modeling these events remains a major challenge because many nuclear physics inputs are required. The key ingredient is the equation of state of hot dense matter. Although matter effects are predominant during the merger and post-merger phases, we can also probe dense matter during the inspiral stage. In this phase, the neutron star is slightly deformed due to the tidal field of its companion. These deformations are quantified by the so-called tidal Love numbers. These depend entirely on the properties of matter, and therefore on the equation of state.
Love numbers are generally computed using the equation of state of cold catalyzed matter. Although this is a good approximation when the neutron stars are sufficiently far apart, their constituting matter is expected to be heated during the final orbits due to tidal friction. In this talk, I will present how temperature affects tidal interactions in binary neutron star mergers, using a realistic, temperature-dependent equation of state.
