hide
Free keywords:
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc, Astrophysics, Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, astro-ph.SR
Abstract:
We study the tidal disruption of neutron stars in black hole-neutron star
coalescing binaries. We calculate the critical orbital separation at which the
star is disrupted by the black hole tidal field for several equations of state
describing the matter inside the neutron star, and for a large set of the
binary parameters. When the disruption occurs before the star reaches the
innermost stable circular orbit, the gravitational wave (GW) signal emitted by
the system is expected to exhibit a cutoff frequency nu_GWtide, which is a
distinctive feature of the waveform. We evaluate nu_GWtide and show that, if
this frequency will be found in a detected gravitational wave, it will allow to
determine the neutron star radius with an error of a few percent, providing
valuable information on the behaviour of matter in the stellar core.
