Prospects of identifying the presence of Strange Stars using Gravitational Waves from binary systems

Abstract

The existence of self-bound strange stars is a long-standing mystery in astrophysics. Future astrophysical data, even with improved precision, may not allow us to discriminate them from neutron stars, given the uncertainties in observational and theoretical modeling. In this work, we propose a unique strategy to distinguish strange stars from neutron stars using gravitational waves from binary compact star systems. We demonstrate that empirical relations connecting f-mode frequencies with tidal deformation are distinct for the two classes of compact objects, irrespective of their equations of state. Therefore simultaneous measurement of f-mode frequency and tidal deformability from the inspiral phase of compact binary mergers with the next-generation detectors can provide smoking gun evidence for the presence of strange stars. This would have crucial implications not only in gravitational wave physics but multidisciplinary fields such as nuclear and high energy physics.