A Statistical Standard Siren Measurement of the Hubble Constant from the LIGO/Virgo Gravitational Wave Compact Object Merger GW190814 and Dark Energy Survey Galaxies

2020/06/30 by A. Palmese, J. deVicente, M. E. S. Pereira +89 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black hole (networking) #Cosmology #Dark energy #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Gravitational wave #Hubble's law #Luminosity #Luminosity distance #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Redshift #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.HE

paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/2041-8213/abaeff

published as The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2020, Volume 900, Number 2 · 12 pages, 3 figures, replacement reflects published version

openalex created_date 2020/07/02 · openalex publication_date 2020/09/01 · arxiv created 2020/12/28 · arxiv updated 2020/12/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

Abstract We present a measurement of the Hubble constant H 0 using the gravitational wave (GW) event GW190814, which resulted from the coalescence of a 23 M ⊙ black hole with a 2.6 M ⊙ compact object, as a standard siren. No compelling electromagnetic counterpart has been identified for this event; thus our analysis accounts for thousands of potential host galaxies within a statistical framework. The redshift information is obtained from the photometric redshift (photo- z ) catalog from the Dark Energy Survey. The luminosity distance is provided by the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave sky map. Since this GW event has the second-smallest localization volume after GW170817, GW190814 is likely to provide the best constraint on cosmology from a single standard siren without identifying an electromagnetic counterpart. Our analysis uses photo- z probability distribution functions and corrects for photo- z biases. We also reanalyze the binary black hole GW170814 within this updated framework. We explore how our findings impact the H 0 constraints from GW170817, the only GW merger associated with a unique host galaxy. From a combination of GW190814, GW170814, and GW170817, our analysis yields (68% highest-density interval, HDI) for a prior in H 0 uniform between . The addition of GW190814 and GW170814 to GW170817 improves the 68% HDI from GW170817 alone by ∼18%, showing how well-localized mergers without counterparts can provide a significant contribution to standard siren measurements, provided that a complete galaxy catalog is available at the location of the event.

Citations

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Cited by

• GW190521 from the Merger of Ultradwarf Galaxies
• Cosmology with the angular cross-correlation of gravitational-wave and galaxy catalogs: forecasts for next-generation interferometers and the Euclid survey