Observations of the high-frequency gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by the hot and massive remnant of a binary neutron star merger will provide new probes of the dense-matter equation of state (EoS). We show that current uncertainties in the thermal physics can cause the emergent GW spectum to differ by a degree comparable to changing the cold EoS by ±∼120 m in the characteristic radius of a neutron star. Unless a very close binary neutron star merger takes place, these effects are unlikely to be measurable with current GW detectors. However, with proposed next-generation detectors such as Cosmic Explorer or Einstein Telescope, the effects can be distinguished for events at distances of up to ~80-200 Mpc, if the cold EoS is sufficiently well constrained.
@article{arxiv.2312.14046,
title = {Detectability of Finite-Temperature Effects From Neutron Star Mergers with Next-Generation Gravitational Wave Detectors},
author = {Carolyn A. Raithel and Vasileios Paschalidis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.14046},
year = {2024}
}