Gravitational waves or deconfined quarks: what causes the premature collapse of neutron stars born in short gamma-ray bursts?

Understand

We infer the collapse times of long-lived neutron stars into black holes using the X-ray afterglows of 18 short gamma-ray bursts.

• We then apply hierarchical inference to infer properties of the neutron star equation of state and dominant spin-down mechanism.
• We measure the maximum non-rotating neutron star mass $M_\mathrm{TOV} = 2.31 ^{+0.36}_{-0.21} M_{\odot}$ and constrain the fraction of remnants spinning down predominantly through gravitational-wave emission to $\eta = 0.69 ^{+0.21}_{-0.39}$ with $68 \%$ uncertainties.
• In principle, this method can determine the difference between hadronic and quark equation of states.