Rapid model comparison of equations of state from gravitational wave observation of binary neutron star coalescences

Understand

The discovery of the coalescence of binary neutron star GW170817 was a watershed moment in the field of gravitational wave astronomy.

• Among the rich variety of information that we were able to uncover from this discovery was the first non-electromagnetic measurement of the neutron star radius, and the cold nuclear equation of state.
• It also led to a large equation of state model-selection study from gravitational-wave data.
• In those studies Bayesian nested sampling runs were conducted for each candidate equation of state model to compute their evidence in the gravitational-wave data.