A post-Newtonian approach to neutron star oscillations

Abstract

Next-generation gravitational-wave detectors are expected to constrain the properties of extreme density matter via observations of static and dynamical tides in binary neutron star inspirals. The required modelling is straightforward in Newtonian gravity—where the tide can be represented in terms of a sum involving the star’s oscillation modes—but not yet fully developed in general relativity—where the mode-sum approach is problematic. As a step towards more realistic models, we are motivated to explore the post-Newtonian (pN) approach to the problem (noting that the modes should still provide an adequate basis for a tidal expansion up to 2 pN order). Specifically, in this paper we develop the pN framework for neutron star oscillations and explore to what extent the results remain robust for stars in the strong-field regime. Our numerical results show that the model is accurate for low-mass stars (≲ 0.8 M ⊙), but becomes problematic for more massive stars. However, we demonstrate that the main issues can be resolved (at the cost of abandoning the consistency of the pN expansion) allowing us to extend the calculation into the neutron star regime. For canonical neutron stars (≈ 1.4 M ⊙) our adjusted formulation provides the fundamental mode of the star with an accuracy comparable to that of the relativistic Cowling approximation. For lower mass stars our approach performs is significantly more accurate, suggesting that a pN formulation of the tidal problem is, indeed, warranted.