## [1009.0521] Analytic modelling of tidal effects in the relativistic inspiral of binary neutron stars

Authors: Luca Baiotti, Thibault Damour, Bruno Giacomazzo, Alessandro Nagar, Luciano Rezzolla

Date: 2 Sep 2010

Abstract: To detect the gravitational-wave signal from binary neutron stars and extract information about the equation of state of matter at nuclear density, it is necessary to match the signal with a bank of accurate templates. We have performed the longest (to date) general-relativistic simulations of binary neutron stars with different compactnesses and used them to constrain a tidal extension of the effective-one-body model so that it reproduces the numerical waveforms accurately and essentially up to the merger. The typical errors in the phase over the $\simeq 22$ gravitational-wave cycles are $\Delta \phi\simeq \pm 0.24$ rad, thus with relative phase errors $\Delta \phi/\phi \simeq 0.2%$. We also show that with a single choice of parameters, the effective-one-body approach is able to reproduce all of the numerically-computed phase evolutions, in contrast with what found when adopting a tidally corrected post-Newtonian Taylor-T4 expansion.

#### Sep 02, 2010

1009.0521 (/preprints)
2010-09-02, 23:09