SIMBAD references

The nuclear symmetry energy plays a role in determining both the nuclear properties of terrestrial matter as well as the astrophysical properties of neutron stars. The first measurement of the neutron star tidal deformability, from gravitational-wave event GW170817, provides a new way of probing the symmetry energy. In this work, we report on new constraints on the symmetry energy from GW170817. We focus in particular on the low-order coefficients: namely, the value of the symmetry energy at the nuclear saturation density, S₀, and the slope of the symmetry energy, L₀. We find that the gravitational-wave data are relatively insensitive to S₀, but that they depend strongly on L₀ and point to lower values of L₀ than have previously been reported, with a peak likelihood near L₀ ∼ 23 MeV. Finally, we use the inferred posteriors on L₀ to derive new analytic constraints on higher-order nuclear terms.