Speaker
Description
Neutron star (NS) asteroseismology is a powerful tool for probing the nature of matter inside NSs, with various oscillation modes being sensitive to different properties of matter in different regions of the star, and thus to different aspects of fundamental nuclear physics. Current asteroseismic studies however focus on particular families of oscillation modes, or rely on phenomenological parametrisations that obfuscate links to the underlying physics of nuclear interactions responsible for properties of NS matter. While this has been sufficient to examine previous asteroseismic observables, planned next-generation gravitational wave (GW) observatories -- such as the Einstein Telescope (ET) or Cosmic Explorer (CE) -- will be sufficiently sensitive to detect the impact of resonant and off-resonant excitations of a wide range of modes in many binary NS sources, providing an unprecedented amount of information about the NS mode spectrum. To fully utilise this information, we must work to develop models that self-consistently derive a wide range of NS matter properties from underlying nuclear physics, allowing for modes across the spectrum to be consistently calculated and linked to fundamental physics. Neutron superfluidity is of particular note for this, as it results in the appearance of an entire new class of modes with counter-moving fluid and superfluid elements. In this talk, I will give an overview of the neutron star mode spectrum and the wide range of physics -- including neutron superfluidity -- on which it depends, discuss previous works that incorporated superfluidity into the calculation of mode frequencies and eigenfunctions, and examine challenges in self-consistently connecting the full NS mode spectrum that will be observable in GWs to fundamental nuclear physics.