The Influence of Muons, Pions, and Trapped Neutrinos on Neutron Star Mergers

Understand

The merger of two neutron stars probes dense matter in a hot, neutrino-trapped regime.

• In this work, we investigate how fully accounting for pions, muons, and muon-type neutrinos in the trapped regime may affect the outcome of the merger.
• By performing fully general-relativistic hydrodynamics simulations of merging neutron stars with equations of state to which we systematically add those different particle species, we aim to provide a detailed assessment of the impact of muons and pions on the merger and post-merger phase.
• In particular, we investigate the merger thermodynamics, mass ejection and gravitational wave emission.