Non-linear saturation of gravito-inertial modes excited by tidal resonances in binary neutron stars

During the last seconds of a binary neutron-star merger, the tidal force can excite stellar oscillation modes to large amplitudes. From the perspective of premerger electromagnetic emissions and next-generation gravitational-wave detectors, gravity (g−) modes constitute a propitious class. However, existing estimates for their impact employ linear schemes which may be inaccurate for large amplitudes, as achieved by tidal resonances. With rotation, inertial modes can be excited as well and while their non-linear saturation has been studied, an extension to fully-consistent gravito-inertial modes, especially in the neutron-star context, is an open problem. We study the linear and non-linear saturation of gravito-inertial modes and investigate the astrophysical consequences for binary neutron-star mergers, including the possibility of resonance-induced dynamo activity. A new (non-)linear formulation based on the separation of equilibrium and dynamical tides is developed. Implementing this into the 3D pseudo-spectral code MagIC, a suite of non-linear simulations of tidally-excited flows with an entropy/composition gradient in a stably-stratified Boussinesq spherical-shell are carried out. The new formulation accurately reproduces results of linear calculations for gravito-inertial modes with a free surface for low frequencies. For a constant-density cavity, we show that the axisymmetric differential rotation induced by nonlinear 2g and 1g modes may theoretically be large enough to amplify an ambient magnetic field to ≳1014 G. In addition, rich non-linear dynamics are observed in the form of a parametric instability for the 1g mode. The stars are also spun-up, which extends the resonance window for any given mode.