Binary neutron star mergers in Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity

Understand

Binary neutron star mergers, which can lead to less massive black holes relative to other known astrophysical channels, have the potential to probe modifications to general relativity that arise at smaller curvature scales compared to more massive compact object binaries.

• As a representative example of this, here we study binary neutron star mergers in shift-symmetric Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity using evolutions of the full, nonperturbative evolution equations.
• We find that the impact on the inspiral is small, even at large values of the modified gravity coupling (as expected, as neutron stars do not have scalar charge in this theory).
• However, postmerger there can be strong scalar effects, including radiation.