About me:
Pedro Espino is an N3AS Postdoctoral Research Fellow. He received his Ph.D. in 2021 from the University of Arizona. His research focuses on binary neutron star mergers and associated phenomena, including: the role of strong magnetic fields in BNS mergers, the effect of neutrino transport in BNS mergers, the role of nuclear heating in the kilonova counterparts to BNS mergers, and the role of QCD phase transitions in BNS mergers. He works within the field of numerical relativity to use state-of-the-art astrophysics simulations of BNS mergers and associated systems to investigate the aforementioned phenomena.
Seminar Title:
Revealing Phase Transitions in Dense Matter with Gravitational Wave Spectroscopy of Binary Neutron Star Mergers
Seminar Date:
Mar. 21st, 2023
Abstract:
We use general relativistic hydrodynamics simulations of binary neutron star mergers to show that high-density deconfinement phase transitions can be probed using multimodal gravitational wave (GW) spectroscopy. We find that hadron-quark phase transitions suppress the one-armed spiral instability, and note an anti-correlation between the energy carried in the l=2, m=1 GW mode and the gap in energy density which qualitatively separates the two phases. We highlight how the measured signal-to-noise ratio of the l=2, m=1, and l=2, m=2 GW modes may provide insight into the neutron star equation of state.