Binary neutron stars (BNSs) wield a pivotal role in modern astrophysics. Thanks to the timing precision of pulsars, BNSs are unique laboratories to probe gravitational physics and test the evolution of massive stellar progenitors. Furthermore, merging BNSs can be loud sources of gravitational waves and the observation of the electromagnetic counterpart of GW170817 paved the way for new frontiers in multimessenger astrophysics. From the theoretical point of view, many open questions persist: what are the processes that most affect the evolution of a BNS? What are the birth spins and magnetic fields of neutron stars and how do they evolve? In this talk, I will try to answer some of these questions through a new de- tailed analysis of the properties and evolution of BNSs. I combined cosmological simulations with the state-of-the-art population-synthesis code SEVN and ex- plored the impact of binary star evolution prescriptions, such as the common envelope efficiency, and neutron star spins and magnetic fields properties on the population of BNSs. I will also show how my results compare against the Galactic pulsar population. Finally, I will discuss the implications of my results for the next-generation gravitational-wave detectors and radio observatories.
Elisabetta Rigliaco