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A tale of two mergers: searching for strangeness in compact stars

Madappa Prakash and James M Lattimer

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We contrast the evolution of gravitational binary mergers for the two cases of a black hole and a normal neutron star and a black hole and a self-bound strange quark matter star. In both cases inspiral continues until the Roche limit is reached, at which point it is expected that stable mass transfer to the black hole ensues. Whereas a neutron star would then outspiral, the strange quark matter star barely moves out at all. Eventually, the strange quark star loses all its mass to the black hole, as compared to the neutron star whose outspiral continues until stable mass transfer terminates and inspiral resumes. These scenarios result in distinctly different gravitational wave signatures.


PACS

21.65.-f Nuclear matter

95.30.Sf Relativity and gravitation

95.30.Cq Elementary particle processes

04.70.-s Physics of black holes

97.60.Lf Black holes

26.60.-c Nuclear matter aspects of neutron stars

Subjects

Nuclear physics

Gravitation and cosmology

Particle physics and field theory

Astrophysics and astroparticles

Dates

Issue 1 (January 2004)

Received 16 May 2003

Published 11 December 2003



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