Minimally modeled characterization method of postmerger gravitational wave emission from binary neutron star coalescences

Abstract: Gravitational waves emitted during the coalescence of binary neutron star systems carry information about the equation of state describing the extremely dense matter inside neutron stars. In particular, the equation of state determines the fate of the binary after the merger: a prompt collapse to black hole, or the formation of a neutron star remnant that is either stable or survives up to a few seconds before collapsing to a black hole. Determining the evolution of a binary neutron star system will therefore place strong constraints on the equation of state. We present a morphology-independent method, developed in the framework of the coherentWaveBurst analysis of signals from ground-based interferometric detectors of gravitational waves. The method characterizes the time-frequency postmerger gravitational-wave emission from a binary neutron star system, and determines whether, after the merger, it formed a remnant neutron star or promptly collapsed to a black hole. We measure the following quantities to characterize the postmerger emission: ratio of signal energies and match of luminosity profile in different frequency bands, weighted central frequency and bandwidth. From these quantities, based on the study of signals simulated through injections of numerical relativity waveforms, we build a statistics to discriminate between the different scenarios after the merger. Finally, we test our method on a set of signals simulated with new models, to estimate its efficiency as a function of the source distance.