Waveform systematics for binary neutron star gravitational wave signals: effects of the point-particle baseline and tidal descriptions

Understand

Gravitational wave (GW) astronomy has consolidated its role as a new observational window to reveal the properties of compact binaries in the Universe.

• In particular, the discovery of the first binary neutron star coalescence, GW170817, led to a number of scientific breakthroughs as the possibility to place constraints on the equation of state of cold matter at supranuclear densities.
• These constraints and all scientific results based on them require accurate models describing the GW signal to extract the source properties from the measured signal.
• In this article, we study potential systematic biases during the extraction of source parameters using different descriptions for both, the point-particle dynamics and tidal effects.