Unveiling the universality of I-Love-Q relations

Understand

The recent discovery of the universal I-Love-Q relations connecting the moment of inertia, tidal deformability, and the spin-induced quadrupole moment of compact stars is intriguing and totally unexpected.

• In this paper, we provide numerical evidence showing that the universality can be attributed to the incompressible limit of the I-Love-Q relations.
• The fact that modern equations of state are stiff, with an effective adiabatic index larger than about two, above the nuclear density range is the key to establishing the universality for neutron stars and quark stars with typical compactness from about 0.1 to 0.3.
• On the other hand, the I-Love-Q relations of low-mass neutron stars near the minimum mass limit depend more sensitively on the underlying equation of state because these stars are composed mainly of softer matter at low densities.