Al-Mamun Mohammad, Steiner Andrew W, Nättilä Joonas, Lange Jacob, O'Shaughnessy Richard, Tews Ingo, Gandolfi Stefano, Heinke Craig, Han Sophia
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, USA.
Physics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2021 Feb 12;126(6):061101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.061101.
We perform a joint Bayesian inference of neutron-star mass and radius constraints based on GW170817, observations of quiescent low-mass x-ray binaries (QLMXBs), photospheric radius expansion x-ray bursting sources, and x-ray timing observations of J0030+0451. With this dataset, the form of the prior distribution still has an impact on the posterior mass-radius curves and equation of state (EOS), but this impact is smaller than recently obtained when considering QLMXBs alone. We analyze the consistency of the electromagnetic data by including an "intrinsic scattering" contribution to the uncertainties, and find only a slight broadening of the posteriors. This suggests that the gravitational-wave and electromagnetic observations of neutron-star structure are providing a consistent picture of the neutron-star mass-radius curve and the EOS.
