2.1. The NS inspiral stage
Let us consider the last stages of the NS-NS binary system evolution using analytical approach [
1]. Two NSs with masses
and
rotate in a quasi-circular orbit with the orbital frequency
where
a is the distance between the components,
is the total mass of the system. The circular orbit assumption is justified by the population synthesis calculations [
26] and the GW observations [
27]. The orbital angular momentum
of the system in this case can be written as
The NSs approach each other due to the loss of the total angular momentum
of the system, which, in addition to the orbital angular momentum
, includes the rotational (or spin) angular momenta of the components
and
. The equation for changing the total angular momentum of the system has the form:
where
is the rate of the angular momentum loss to emit GW, determined by the classical formula (e.g. [
28]):
Let us assume that over millions of years of co-evolution, the NSs have been tidally synchronized (e.g. [
29]). Then, their spin angular momenta before the beginning of the mass transfer are
where
are the moments of inertia of the components. In the general case, the moment of inertia and the equatorial radius of a rotating NS depend on its mass and angular momentum. To calculate them, we use the approximate formulas from Appendix B of our paper [
17]. Taking into account (
5), it is easy to find the derivatives of the spin angular momenta with respect to time:
where we introduce the notation
. The system of Equations (
1)–(
6) describes the evolution of the NS-NS binary system before the beginning of the mass transfer.
2.2. The stable mass transfer stage
In the case of a sufficiently high asymmetry of the initial masses of the components (see [
17] for the specific value), the LMNS with the radius
at some moment first fills its Roche lobe with an effective radius
, i.e.
. We parametrize the effective radius of the Roche lobe in accordance with [
30]:
where
is the mass ratio of the components.
After the low-mass component fills its Roche lobe, the stable mass transfer onto the massive component through the inner Lagrangian point
begins. At the same time, the orbital angular momentum
of the system is partially transferred to the spin angular momentum
of the accretor (see [
31]):
where
j is the specific angular momentum of the accreting matter in orbital units,
is the ratio of the donor mass to the total mass of the system,
is the dimensionless stopping radius of the accreting matter. During the stripping of the LMNS, two modes of accretion can take place [
32]. In one case, the accretion stream hits the surface of the accretor with the equatorial radius
. If the minimum distance
for which the stream approaches the massive component turns out to be larger than the equatorial radius of the accretor
, then an accretion disk with outer radius
is formed. For various accretion modes (direct impact or disk accretion), the dimensionless stopping radius is:
Approximations of
,
and
are given in [
31].
Due to the accretion of matter, the asymmetry of the system increases and the components recede each other. The mass transfer lasts on a relatively long time scale, determined by the rate of the orbital angular momentum loss emitted away by GW. If the total mass of the system is greater than the maximum NS mass, then at some moment the massive NS collapses into a BH. In this case, we assume the radius of the accretor to be
, where
is the Schwarzschild radius of the BH with mass
. For the rationale for this approach, see our paper [
17].
The stable mass transfer continues until the size of the Roche lobe (
7) grows faster than the radius of the LMNS
. This condition can be expressed as an inequality (see [
17,
23]):
At some moment, the mass of the LMNS becomes so small that the mass transfer stability is violated. After that, the remnant
(see
Figure 3 below) is absorbed by
on a fast, hydrodynamic time scale. When the low-mass component reaches the minimum NS mass
, it loses its hydrodynamic stability and explodes [
19].
2.3. The NS EoS in the low-mass region
In our previous papers [
17,
23], the effects of accretion spin-up of the massive component, as well as its tidal and magneto-dipole spin-down, were investigated in detail. We have shown that accounting for accretion spin-up leads to a significant (by an order of magnitude) decrease in the stripping time
, one of the most important parameters of the stripping mechanism, corresponding to the time delay between the loss of the GW signal and the GRB detection for GW170817-GRB170817A event [
22]. The influence of the other two mentioned effects turns out to be insignificant.
In this article, we consider the contribution of the other important ingredient, the NS EoS. As was shown in [
17], a specific type of EoS has small impact on the position of the mass boundary between the merging and stripping scenarios. This is due to the fact that the derivative
in the criterion (
10) is almost equal to zero in the region of the moderate NS masses. But with decreasing the LMNS mass, the contribution of this derivative increases (in absolute value), see
Figure 2. Therefore, it is expected that the stripping time
should be sensitive to the NS EoS in the low-mass region.
To investigate the sensitivity of the stripping time to the EoS in the low-mass region (
), we use the parametrization of the mass-radius relation from [
33], shown in the left panel of
Figure 2. Additionally, the dotted lines represent the curves corresponding to the latest versions of the BSk-type EoS [
24]. The main parameter here is
, which is a combination of the so-called incompressibility of symmetric nuclear matter
and the symmetry energy slope parameter
, poorly determined from terrestrial experiments and astrophysical observations (see, e.g., [
34] for a review). Recall that these parameters enter into the expansion of the nuclear EoS near the saturation density
:
where
and
are the saturation energy and the symmetry energy at the point
, and
(all symbols correspond to [
33]).
How does the stripping time depend on the NS mass-radius relation (or the EoS)? This can be understood from the following qualitative considerations. With decreasing the LMNS mass, the radius of the flatter mass-radius configurations grow faster than the radius of the steeper ones. Therefore, the moment of the stability loss of the mass transfer, when the the Roche lobe size of the low-mass component grows slower than its radius, begins earlier for the flatter configurations. To confirm this argument, let us turn again to
Figure 2. It can be seen from a comparison of the two panels that for the flatter mass-radius relations, the corresponding logarithmic derivative curves lie lower than for the steeper ones, so, according to our criterion (
10), the stripping time is
must be less for the flatter relations.
At the same time, as shown by our calculations, the last stages of the stripping process are much slower than the initial ones (see panel
d in
Figure 3 from [
17]). It means that the stripping time is determined mainly by the last stages of the stable mass-transfer process. We also noticed that the NS-NS systems with the same total mass
, but different initial mass ratios
, evolve through almost the same stages during the stripping process, starting from
. In other words, the evolution of the NS-NS system weakly depends on its prehistory.
Using the results described above, we performed the series of calculations for the NS-NS system with initial masses
and
, so that the total mass
is agreed with the total mass of the GW170817 source [
10]. We use the BSk22 EoS for the massive NS, and the parametrization
— for the LMNS. Accretion spin-up is taken into account in all calculations.
Figure 3 shows the dependence of the stripping time
and the mass of the low-mass component
(unstable), at which the mass-transfer stability is lost, on the value of the nuclear parameter
. The horizontal dash-dotted line on the bottom panel corresponds to the minimum NS mass
(see, e.g., [
18]). We exclude the values of
45 MeV and
155 MeV, which give non-physical results
. The DI region corresponds to the direct impact accretion of matter on the surface of the massive component, and DI+DF corresponds to the successive change of accretion modes and the accretion disk formation at the final stages of the stripping process. Crosses indicate calculations with the BSk EoS for the low-mass component. Comparison of
Figure 3 with
Figure 2 shows that, as we assumed, for the flatter mass-radius relations, the mass-transfer stability is lost for large
and corresponds to small
.
Figure 3.
The top and bottom panels show the dependence of the stripping time and the LMNS mass , at which the mass-transfer stability is lost, on the parameter . Crosses indicate calculations for the BSk EoS. See text for details.
Figure 3.
The top and bottom panels show the dependence of the stripping time and the LMNS mass , at which the mass-transfer stability is lost, on the parameter . Crosses indicate calculations for the BSk EoS. See text for details.
2.4. The nuclear parameters and the stripping time
The identification of the GW170817-GRB170817A event in the framework of the stripping model [
22,
23] allows us to impose an important limitation on the nuclear EoS parameters near the saturation density point from (
11). Let us look at
Figure 3 again. The circle on the top panel corresponds to the observed stripping time
, corresponding to the time delay between the loss of the GW170817 signal by the LIGO-Virgo GW interferometers and the registration of the GRB170817A [
7,
8]. Comparison of the calculated and observed values of
allows us to find the nuclear parameter
. The value of
obtained in this way is the upper bound, because in our calculations with the formula (
3) we neglected the effect of tidal spin-down of the massive component, which slightly increases the duration of the stable mass transfer (see [
17]). As discussed above, we perform calculations with initial masses
and
. At the same time, the generation of the GRB during the explosion of the minimum NS mass after the loss of the mass-transfer stability (at
) should also take some extra time [
25]. All these processes should increase the stripping time and correspondingly reduce the real value of
. The constraint on the range of parameters
is shown in
Figure 4. The yellow area illustrates the limitations according to the PREX-II experiment [
35]. In this important experiment, the neutron skin thickness of
, which correlates with the NS radius and the symmetry energy slope parameter
L[
36], was determined for the first time in a model-independent way. The blue area (Astro) corresponds to the results of processing various astrophysical observations related to determining the NS masses and radii [
37]. The blue ellipse combines astrophysical observations with the constraints on the NS EoS from the chiral effective field theory,
(see also [
38] for a review). The plus signs denote the values of
L and
for the BSk-type EoS [
24].
Having the generally accepted value of the incompressibility of symmetric nuclear matter
(see, e.g., [
39]), we obtain
(see
Figure 5). The colored symbols (together with the corresponding error bars) represent the results of the Bayesian analysis of various terrestrial experiments and astronomical observations. The orange rhombus denotes the result of processing model-dependent measurements of the neutron skin thickness of tin isotopes (Sn-isotopes) [
40]. The green square corresponds to the limitation from observations of low-mass X-ray binaries with the Chandra and XMM-Newton telescopes [
41], and the purple five-pointed star is obtained from the analysis of the GW170817 signal, combined with data from various experiments to measure the neutron skin thickness of lead [
42].
Figure 5 clearly shows a significant discrepancy between the results of the mentioned PREX-II [
35] experiment (the four-pointed asterisk) and the entire set of astrophysical observations [
37] (the blue triangle), as well as the other terrestrial experiments. The blue cross combines the results of the PREX-II and astrophysical data. It can be seen that our constraint on
L (the burgundy circle) agrees with all the data presented. The subsequent consideration of the general relativity effects discussed in [
17] and non-conservative mass transfer will make it possible to refine this estimate.