Resonance locking: radian-level phase shifts due to nonlinear hydrodynamics of g-modes in merging neutron star binaries

A neutron star (NS) in a binary system deforms due to the companion's tidal gravitational field. As the binary inspirals due to gravitational wave (GW) emission, the NS's deformation evolves; this evolution is typically modeled as the star's linear response to the companion's time-evolving tidal potential. In principle, the fluid elements' displacements can be excited and evolve nonlinearly since the equations of hydrodynamics and the tidal forcing have nonlinear terms. Recently, Kwon, Yu, and Venumadhav (KYV I [arXiv:2410.03831]) showed that nonlinear terms in the hydrodynamic equations of motion make the low-frequency response of NSs, characterized by gravity ($g$-) modes, behave in an anharmonic manner. The anharmonicity is dominantly generated by the mutual coupling of the four lowest-order ($n=1$, $l=|m|=2$) $g$-modes, and allows them to stay locked in a resonant state that oscillates phase-coherently with the orbit throughout the inspiral. As a result, the $g$-modes grow to larger amplitudes than the linear response suggests, leading to an extra phase correction to the frequency-domain GW signal $|\Delta \Psi|\approx 3\,{\rm rad}$ at a GW frequency of $1.05\,{\rm kHz}$. This effect is part of the truly dynamical tide, in the sense that the amplitude depends not just on the binary's instantaneous frequency but the entire history of the inspiral. In this paper, we explain the phenomenology of resonance locking in detail and analytically validate the numerical dephasing calculations in KYV I. We also demonstrate that the effect is only significant for the lowest-order $g$-modes.