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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc
Abstract:
Measurements of the properties of binary neutron star systems from
gravitational-wave observations require accurate theoretical models for such
signals. However, current models are incomplete, as they do not take into
account all of the physics of these systems: some neglect possible tidal
effects, others neglect spin-induced orbital precession, and no existing model
includes the post-merger regime consistently. In this work, we explore the
importance of two physical ingredients: tidal interactions during the inspiral
and the imprint of the post-merger stage. We use complete
inspiral--merger--post-merger waveforms constructed from a tidal
effective-one-body approach and numerical-relativity simulations as signals
against which we perform parameter estimates with waveform models of standard
LIGO-Virgo analyses. We show that neglecting tidal effects does not lead to
appreciable measurement biases in masses and spin for typical observations
(small tidal deformability and signal-to-noise ratio $\sim$ 25). However, with
increasing signal-to-noise ratio or tidal deformability there are biases in the
estimates of the binary parameters. The post-merger regime, instead, has no
impact on gravitational-wave measurements with current detectors for the
signal-to-noise ratios we consider.
