The presence and order of QCD phase transitions from gravitational-wave observations of neutron star mergers

@misc{lasky2026presence,
  title = {{The presence and order of QCD phase transitions from gravitational-wave observations of neutron star mergers}},
  author = {Paul D. Lasky and Alexander Clevinger and Andre G. da Silva and Ricardo L. S. Farias and Veronica Dexheimer},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.27287},
  eprint = {2610.27287},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27287},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - The presence and order of QCD phase transitions from gravitational-wave observations of neutron star mergers
AU  - Paul D. Lasky
AU  - Alexander Clevinger
AU  - Andre G. da Silva
AU  - Ricardo L. S. Farias
AU  - Veronica Dexheimer
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/19
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.27287
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27287
AB  - Gravitational-wave observations of neutron star mergers allows us to probe the dense portion of the nuclear equation of state. We develop a formalism for testing the existence and order of phase transitions in the cores of neutron stars using only gravitational-wave observations of their inspiral. We test our formalism on data from the first binary neutron star mergers GW170817 and GW190425, and use synthetic injections assuming the next and uber-next upgrades of the LIGO observatories, A+ and A#, as well as with Cosmic Explorer. We show that populations of mergers in either A+ or A# will be able to measure the existence of a first-order phase transition in observations lasting less than one PhD (less than half a US PhD!). On the other hand, with only the inspiral, we cannot distinguish populations of neutron stars with no phase transition from those with second- or third-order phase transitions or with first-order phase transitions with relatively large transition densities.
ER  -