Exploring astrophysical priors for gravitational-wave inference of neutron star source properties*

The inferred properties of gravitational-wave source systems are sensitive to prior assumptions about the source populations. We explore the implications for GW190425 and GW170817 under the assumption of various 'realistic' population properties, including a neutron-star mass and spin distributions motivated by observations of pulsars in our galaxy and a common equation of state linking the tidal parameters. In some cases, reweighting of public samples can be used to determine the effect of changing priors, but as priors become more constraining the application of reweighting is limited by the samples available. To explore the impact of inferring a common equation of state, we also implement and test the "binary love" universal relations previously used to infer properties of GW170817 in the Bayesian inference library bilby. This will allow direct inference of a source's properties using bilby under the assumption that both components share the same equation of state.