Sensitivity of Neutron Star Observations to Three-nucleon Forces

Understand

Astrophysical observations of neutron stars have been widely used to infer the properties of the nuclear matter equation of state.

• Beside being a source of information on average properties of dense matter, however, the data provided by electromagnetic and gravitational wave (GW) facilities are reaching the accuracy needed to constrain, for the first time, nuclear dynamics in dense matter.
• In this work we assess the sensitivity of current and future neutron star observations to directly infer the strength of repulsive three-nucleon forces, which are key to determine the stiffness of the equation of state.
• Using a Bayesian approach we focus on the constraints that can be derived on three-body interactions from binary neutron star mergers observed by second and third-generation of gravitational wave interferometers.