Studying the effects of tidal corrections on parameter estimation

Document #:

LIGO-G1300731-v1

Document type:

G - Presentations (eg Graphics)

Abstract:

Tidal deformations of neutron stars in binary systems during the in fall of gravitationally radiating neutron stars before merger call for analytic corrections to the post-Newtonian gravitational-wave waveform. Tidal deformation information is important to searches for gravitational waves from these sources because they can break degeneracies in the estimation of the physical parameters of the binary and could also lead to insights about the neutron star equation of state. Using full Bayesian MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) simulations, we studied how tidal corrections affect and inform parameter estimation for binary neutron stars. We also investigate the systematic biases that arise in parameter estimation from using different post-Newtonian waveform families.

Files in Document:

• 2013_Amaldi_Wade.pdf (2.2 MB)

Topics:

• Compact Binaries

Authors:

• Leslie Wade
• Jolien Creighton
• Evan Ochsner
• Benjamin Lackey