Effect of spin on the inspiral of binary neutron stars

Abstract

We perform long-term simulations of spinning binary neutron stars, with our highest dimensionless spin being chi similar to 0.32. To assess the importance of spin during the inspiral, we vary the spin and also use two equations of state, one that consists of plain nuclear matter and produces compact stars (SLy) and a hybrid one that contains both nuclear and quark matter and leads to larger stars (ALF2). Using high resolution that has grid spacing Delta x similar to 98 m on the finest refinement level, we find that the effects of spin in the phase evolution of a binary system can be larger than the one that comes from tidal forces. Our calculations demonstrate explicitly that although tidal effects are dominant for small spins (less than or similar to 0.1), this is no longer true when the spins are larger, but still much smaller than the Keplerian limit.