Measuring Mass and Radius of the Maximum-mass Nonrotating Neutron Star

Abstract

The mass (M TOV) and radius (R TOV) of the maximum-mass nonrotating neutron star (NS) play a crucial role in constraining the elusive equation of state of cold dense matter and in predicting the fate of remnants from binary neutron star (BNS) mergers. In this study, we introduce a novel method to deduce these parameters by examining the mergers of second-generation (2G) black holes (BHs) with NSs. These 2G BHs are assumed to originate from supramassive neutron stars (SMNSs) formed in BNS mergers. Since the properties of the remnant BHs arising from the collapse of SMNSs follow a universal relation governed by M TOV and R TOV, we anticipate that by analyzing a series (∼100 detections) of mass and spin measurements of the 2G BHs using the third-generation ground-based gravitational-wave detectors, M TOV and R TOV can be determined with a precision of ∼0.01M ⊙ and ∼0.6 km, respectively.

Prospects of Identifying Hierarchical Triple Mergers for the Third-generation Ground-based Detectors

“…The investigation of HTMs offers a wealth of scientific prospects. They are crucial for testing the fundamental principles of general relativity (Tang et al 2023), exploring spin-orbit dynamics (Oancea et al 2023), probing the characteristics of the most massive neutron stars (Tang et al 2024) and then testing the results obtained in other approaches , and providing alternative approaches to delineate the formation channels of coalescing compact binaries (Trani et al 2022).…”