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

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 m{s}}}^{-1},{mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$?> (68% highest-density interval, HDI) for a prior in H 0 uniform between m{s}}}^{-1},{mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$?> . 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.

published proceedings

  • ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS

altmetric score

  • 173.44

author list (cited authors)

  • Palmese, A., deVicente, J., Pereira, M., Annis, J., Hartley, W., Herner, K., ... Zuntz, J.

citation count

  • 76

complete list of authors

  • Palmese, A||deVicente, J||Pereira, MES||Annis, J||Hartley, W||Herner, K||Soares-Santos, M||Crocce, M||Huterer, D||Magana Hernandez, I||Garcia, A||Garcia-Bellido, J||Gschwend, J||Holz, DE||Kessler, R||Lahav, O||Morgan, R||Nicolaou, C||Conselice, C||Foley, RJ||Gill, MSS||Abbott, TMC||Aguena, M||Allam, S||Avila, S||Bechtol, K||Bertin, E||Bhargava, S||Brooks, D||Buckley-Geer, E||Burke, DL||Kind, M Carrasco||Carretero, J||Castander, FJ||Chang, C||Costanzi, M||Costa, LN da||Davis, TM||Desai, S||Diehl, HT||Doel, P||Drlica-Wagner, A||Estrada, J||Everett, S||Evrard, AE||Fernandez, E||Finley, DA||Flaugher, B||Fosalba, P||Frieman, J||Gaztanaga, E||Gerdes, DW||Gruen, D||Gruendl, RA||Gutierrez, G||Hinton, SR||Hollowood, DL||Honscheid, K||James, DJ||Kent, S||Krause, E||Kuehn, K||Lin, H||Maia, MAG||March, M||Marshall, JL||Melchior, P||Menanteau, F||Miquel, R||Ogando, RLC||Paz-Chinchon, F||Plazas, AA||Roodman, A||Sako, M||Sanchez, E||Scarpine, V||Schubnell, M||Serrano, S||Sevilla-Noarbe, I||Smith, J Allyn||Smith, M||Suchyta, E||Tarle, G||Troxel, MA||Tucker, DL||Walker, AR||Wester, W||Wilkinson, RD||Zuntz, J

publication date

  • September 2020