Equation of State Effects on Gravitational Waves from Rotating Core Collapse

Understand

Gravitational waves (GWs) generated by axisymmetric rotating collapse, bounce, and early postbounce phases of a galactic core-collapse supernova will be detectable by current-generation gravitational wave observatories.

• Since these GWs are emitted from the quadrupole-deformed nuclear-density core, they may encode information on the uncertain nuclear equation of state (EOS).
• We examine the effects of the nuclear EOS on GWs from rotating core collapse and carry out 1824 axisymmetric general-relativistic hydrodynamic simulations that cover a parameter space of 98 different rotation profiles and 18 different EOS.
• We show that the bounce GW signal is largely independent of the EOS and sensitive primarily to the ratio of rotational to gravitational energy, and at high rotation rates, to the degree of differential rotation.