Neutron star binaries offer a rich phenomenology in terms of gravitational waves and merger remnants. However, most general relativistic studies have been performed for nearly circular binaries, with the exception of head-on collisions. We present the first numerical relativity investigation of mergers of eccentric equal-mass neutron-star binaries that probes the regime between head-on and circular. In addition to gravitational waves generated by the orbital motion, we find that the signal also contains a strong component due to stellar oscillations (f-modes) induced by tidal forces, extending a classical result for Newtonian binaries. The merger can lead to rather massive disks on the order of 10% of the total initial mass.
@article{arxiv.1109.5128,
title = {Eccentric binary neutron star mergers},
author = {Roman Gold and Sebastiano Bernuzzi and Marcus Thierfelder and Bernd Bruegmann and Frans Pretorius},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1109.5128},
year = {2013}
}