Quantifying the Information Gain from Future High-Precision Radius Measurements for Identifying Twin Neutron Stars
Bao-An Li, Xavier Grundler
astro-ph.HE, astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.SR, nucl-ex, nucl-th
Submitted: 2026-08-13
Updated: 2026-08-20
Comments: Version accepted by Phys. Lett. B
License: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
The gist: Twin neutron stars (NSs), characterized by identical gravitational masses but different radii, are among the most promising astrophysical signatures of a strong first-order hadron--quark phase
Terminology
Abstract
Twin neutron stars (NSs), characterized by identical gravitational masses but different radii, are among the most promising astrophysical signatures of a strong first-order hadron--quark phase transition in supradense matter. We investigate how increasingly precise NS radius measurements improve the Bayesian inference of twin-star observability using mock radius data for a canonical 1.4,M NS. Radius uncertainties are varied from the current level of about 0.9 km to the about 0.1 km precision anticipated from future X-ray and gravitational-wave observations. We quantify the information gained using the posterior distribution of the maximum twin-star radius separation R together with an analytical model of branch distinguishability and complementary information-theoretic measures based on the branch observational efficiency and the Shannon entropy. The combined analyses reveal three inference regimes: a prior-dominated regime for sigma R 0.6 km, a rapid information-gain regime for 0.2 sigma R 0.6 km, and an information-saturation regime for sigma R 0.2 km. These complementary analyses consistently indicate that radius measurements with a precision of about 0.2 km already extract most of the information available for identifying twin NSs within the present Bayesian framework. Beyond establishing a quantitative observational benchmark for future high-precision radius measurements, this work provides a general Bayesian framework for quantifying the information gain from progressively more precise observations and identifying the point of diminishing scientific returns.
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