Prospects for constraining twin stars with next-generation gravitational-wave detectors

Abstract: Neutron star equations of state with strong phase transitions may support twin stars, hybrid and hadronic stars with the same mass but different tidal deformabilities. The presence of twin stars in the population of merging neutron stars produces distinctive gaps in the joint distribution of binary tidal deformabilities and chirp masses. We analyze a simulated population of binary neutron star mergers recovered with a network of next-generation (XG) ground-based gravitational-wave detectors to determine how many observations are needed to infer, or rule out, the existence of twin stars. Using a hierarchical inference framework based on a simple parametric twin-star model, we find that a single week of XG observations may suffice to detect a tidal deformability difference of several hundred between twins and measure the mass scale at which twins occur to within a few percent. For less pronounced twins, XG observations will place a stringent upper bound on the tidal deformability difference.