Population properties and multimessenger prospects of neutron star-black hole mergers following GWTC-3

Kavli Affiliate: Salvatore Vitale

| First 5 Authors: Sylvia Biscoveanu, Philippe Landry, Salvatore Vitale, ,

| Summary:

Neutron star-black hole (NSBH) mergers detected in gravitational-waves have
the potential to shed light on supernova physics, the dense matter equation of
state, and the astrophysical processes that power their potential
electromagnetic counterparts. We use the population of four candidate NSBH
events detected in gravitational waves so far with a false alarm rate $leq
1~mathrm{yr}^{-1}$ to constrain the mass and spin distributions and
multimessenger prospects of these systems. We find that the black holes in
NSBHs are both less massive and more slowly spinning that those in black hole
binaries. We also find evidence for a mass gap between the most massive neutron
stars and least massive black holes in NSBHs at 98.6% credibility. We consider
both a Gaussian and a power-law pairing function for the distribution of the
mass ratio between the neutron star and black hole masses but find no
statistical preference between the two. Using an approach driven by
gravitational-wave data rather than binary simulations, we find that fewer than
15% of NSBH mergers detectable in gravitational waves will have an
electromagnetic counterpart. Finally, we propose a method for the
multimessenger analysis of NSBH mergers based on the nondetection of an
electromagnetic counterpart and conclude that, even in the most optimistic
case, the constraints on the neutron star equation of state that can be
obtained with multimessenger NSBH detections are not competitive with those
from gravitational-wave measurements of tides in binary neutron star mergers
and radio and X-ray pulsar observations.

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