Probing Nuclear Matter with Gravitational Waves

Neutron stars are some of the most compact objects found in the Universe reaching densities inaccessible to Earth-based experiments. They can contain as much as two times the mass of the Sun in a region comparable to a small city. The extreme densities reached by neutron stars allow us to probe the elusive neutron-star equation of state: the equation that determines the behavior of matter at supranuclear densities . In this thesis, we present new methods to constrain the neutron-star equation of state using gravitational-wave observations of binary neutron star mergers.