Decoding Long-duration Gravitational Waves from Binary Neutron Stars with Machine Learning: Parameter Estimation and Equations of State

Decoding Long-duration Gravitational Waves from Binary Neutron Stars with Machine Learning: Parameter Estimation and Equations of State

Gravitational waves (GWs) from binary neutron stars (BNSs) offer a valuable understanding of the nature of compact objects and hadronic matter, and the science potential will be greatly enhanced by the third-generation (3G) GW detectors, which are expected to detect BNS signals with order-of-magnitu...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Qian Hu, Jessica Irwin, Qi Sun, Christopher Messenger, Lami Suleiman, Ik Siong Heng, John Veitch
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2025-01-01
Series:The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Subjects:
Gravitational waves
Gravitational wave astronomy
Neutron stars
Nuclear astrophysics
Astronomy data analysis
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ade42f
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Summary:Gravitational waves (GWs) from binary neutron stars (BNSs) offer a valuable understanding of the nature of compact objects and hadronic matter, and the science potential will be greatly enhanced by the third-generation (3G) GW detectors, which are expected to detect BNS signals with order-of-magnitude improvements in duration, detection rates, and signal strength. However, the resulting computational demands for analyzing such prolonged signals pose a critical challenge that existing Bayesian methods cannot feasibly address in the 3G era. To bridge this critical gap, we demonstrate a machine learning–based workflow capable of producing source parameter estimation and constraints on equations of state (EOSs) for hours-long BNS signals in seconds with minimal hardware costs. We employ efficient compression of the GW data and EOS using neural networks, based on which we build normalizing flows for inference that can deliver results in seconds. The optimized computational cost of BNS signal analysis with our framework shows that machine learning has the potential to be an indispensable tool for future catalog-level BNS analyses, paving the way for large-scale investigations of BNS-related physics across the 3G observational landscape.
ISSN:2041-8205

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