Würzburg 2018 – scientific programme

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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 5: Relativistic astrophysics I

GR 5.1: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 21, 2018, 11:00–11:45, NW-Bau - HS3

Formation of Double Neutron Stars and their Merger Rates — •Thomas Tauris — AIfA, University of Bonn — MPIfR

In recent years, the discovery rate of the exotic double neutron star (DNS) systems has increased rapidly. The coming decade will even greatly enhance the number of both radio pulsar DNS systems, with the completion of the Square Kilometre-Array, and DNS mergers from detections of high frequency gravitational waves using LIGO/Virgo. This calls for a new investigation of the formation and evolution of DNS systems. In this talk, I will summarize the beautiful journey of binary stars leading to the production of DNS systems and discuss their key parameters. This includes correlations between spin period, orbital period and eccentricity, based on theoretical modelling. I discuss NS masses and present Monte Carlo simulations of supernovae (SNe) to extrapolate the pre-SN stellar properties and probe the explosions. Finally, I will discuss the merger-rate densities of DNS systems and double black hole systems in the local Universe and compare with LIGO/Virgo detections.