Universal relations to measure neutron star properties from targeted r-mode searches

Abstract

ABSTRACT R-mode oscillations of rotating neutron stars (NS) are promising candidates for continuous gravitational wave (GW) observations. In our recent work, we derived universal relations between the NS parameters compactness and dimensionless tidal deformability with the r-mode frequency. In this work, we investigate how these universal relations can be used to infer various NS intrinsic parameters following a successful detection of the r-modes. In particular, we show that for targeted r-mode searches, these universal relations along with the ‘I–Love–Q’ relation can be used to estimate both the moment of inertia and the distance of the NS, thus breaking the degeneracy of distance measurement for continuous gravitational wave (CGW) observations. We also discuss that, with a prior knowledge of the distance of the NS from electromagnetic observations, these universal relations can also be used to constrain the dense matter equation of state (EOS) inside the NS. We quantify the accuracy to which such measurements can be done using the Fisher information matrix for a broad range of possible, unknown parameters for both the a-LIGO and Einstein Telescope (ET) sensitivities.