paper

The mass distribution of Galactic double neutron stars

arXiv:1902.03300 · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab12e3

Abstract

The conventional wisdom, dating back to 2012, is that the mass distribution of Galactic double neutron stars is well-fit by a Gaussian distribution with a mean of and a width of . With the recent discovery of new Galactic double neutron stars and GW170817, the first neutron star merger event to be observed with gravitational waves, it is timely to revisit this model. In order to constrain the mass distribution of double neutron stars, we perform Bayesian inference using a sample of 17 Galactic double neutron stars effectively doubling the sample used in previous studies. We expand the space of models so that the recycled neutron star need not be drawn from the same distribution as the non-recycled companion. Moreover, we consider different functional forms including uniform, single-Gaussian, and two-Gaussian distributions. While there is insufficient data to draw firm conclusions, we find positive support (a Bayes factor of 9) for the hypothesis that recycled and non-recycled neutron stars have distinct mass distributions. The most probable model---preferred with a Bayes factor of 29 over the conventional model---is one in which the recycled neutron star mass is distributed according to a two-Gaussian distribution and the non-recycled neutron star mass is distributed uniformly. We show that precise component mass measurements of double neutron stars are required in order to determine with high confidence (a Bayes factor of 150) if recycled and non-recycled neutron stars come from a common distribution. Approximately are needed in order to establish the detailed shape of the distributions.

Minor update of PSR J1913+1102 masses, 13 pages, 7 figures, 5 tables

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