2019/12/31 by Ze-Wei Zhao, Ling-Feng Wang, Jing-Fei Zhang +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.scib.2020.04.032
published as Science Bulletin 65 (2020) 1340-1348 · 12 pages, 8 figures; published online in Science Bulletin
arxiv created 2020/05/30 · arxiv updated 2020/07/15
Taiji, a space-based gravitational-wave observatory, consists of three satellites forming an equilateral triangle with arm length of 3× 106 km, orbiting around the Sun. Taiji is able to observe the gravitational-wave standard siren events of massive black hole binary (MBHB) merger, which is helpful in probing the expansion of the universe. In this paper, we preliminarily forecast the capability of Taiji for improving cosmological parameter estimation with the gravitational-wave standard siren data. We simulate five-year standard siren data based on three fiducial cosmological models and three models of MBHB's formation and growth. It is found that the standard siren data from Taiji can effectively break the cosmological parameter degeneracies generated by the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies data, especially for dynamical dark energy models. The constraints on cosmological parameters are significantly improved by the data combination CMB+Taiji, compared to the CMB data alone. Compared to the current optical cosmological observations, Taiji can still provide help in improving the cosmological parameter estimation to some extent. In addition, we consider an ideal scenario to investigate the potential of Taiji on constraining cosmological parameters. We conclude that the standard sirens of MBHB from Taiji will become a powerful cosmological probe in the future.