Universality in quasi-normal modes of neutron stars

Abstract

We study universality in gravitational waves emitted from non-rotating neutron stars characterized by different equations of state (EOSs). We find that the quasi-normal mode frequencies of such waves, including the w-modes and the f -mode, display similar universal scaling behaviours that hold for most EOSs. Such behaviours are shown to stem from the mathematical structure of the axial and the polar gravitational wave equations, and the fact that the mass distribution function can be approximated by a cubic-quintic polynomial in the radius. As a benchmark for other realistic neutron stars, a simple model of neutron stars is adopted here to reproduce the pulsation frequencies and the generic scaling behaviours mentioned above with good accuracy.