Quasi-universal relations in the context of future neutron star detections

Abstract

The equation of state dependence of neutron star's astrophysical features modeling is key to our understanding of dense matter. However, there exists a series of almost equation-of-state independent relations reported in the literature, called quasi-universal relations, that are used to determine neutron star radii and moments of inertia from X-ray and gravitational wave signals. Using sets of equations of state constrained by multi-messenger astronomy measurements and nuclear-physics theory, we discuss quasi-universal relations in the context of future gravitational-wave detectors Cosmic Explorer and Einstein Telescope, and X-ray detector STROBE-X. We focus on relations that involve the moment of inertia $I$, the tidal deformability $Λ$ and the compactness $C$: $C(Λ)$, $I(Λ)$ and $I(C)$. The quasi-universal fits and their associated errors are constructed with three different microphysics approaches which include state of the art nuclear physics theory and astrophysical constraints. Gravitational-wave and X-ray signals are simulated with the sensitivity of the next generation of detectors. Equation of state inference on those simulated signals is performed to assess if quasi-universal relations will offer a better precision on the extraction of neutron star's macroscopic parameters than equation of state dependent relations. We show that detections with the 3rd generation of gravitational wave detectors and the X-ray detector STROBE-X will be sensitive to the fit error marginalization technique. We also find that the sensitivity of those detectors will be sufficient that using full equation of state distributions will offer better precision on extracted parameters than quasi-universal relations.We also note that nuclear physics theory offers a more pronounced equation of state invariance of quasi-universal relations than current astrophysical constraints.