  The dynamics in mergers of binary neutron star (BNS) systems depend
sensitively on the equation of state (EOS) of dense matter. This has profound
implications on the emission of gravitational waves (GWs) and the ejection of
matter in the merger and post-merger phases and is thus of high interest for
multi-messenger astronomy. Today, a variety of nuclear EOSs are available with
various underlying microphysical models. This calls for a study to focus on EOS
effects from different physical nuclear matter properties and their influence
on BNS mergers. We perform simulations of equal-mass BNS mergers with a set of
9 different EOSs based on Skyrme density functionals. In the models, we
systematically vary the effective nucleon mass, incompressibility, and symmetry
energy at saturation density. This allows us to investigate the influence of
specific nuclear matter properties on the dynamics of BNS mergers. We analyze
the impact of these properties on the merger dynamics, the fate of the remnant,
disk formation, ejection of matter, and gravitational wave emission. Our
results indicate that some aspects of the merger are sensitive to the EOS
around saturation density while others are sensitive to the behavior towards
higher densities, e.g., characterized by the slope of the pressure as a
function of density. The detailed density dependence of the EOS thus needs to
be taken into account to describe its influence on BNS mergers.
