A Statistical standard siren measurement of the Hubble constant from the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave compact object merger GW190814 and Dark Energy Survey galaxies

DES Collaboration, A. Palmese, J. devicente, M. E. S. Pereira, J. Annis, W. Hartley, K. Herner, M. Soares-Santos, M. Crocce, D. Huterer, I. Magaa Hernandez, A. Garcia, J. Garcia-Bellido, J. Gschwend, D. E. Holz, R. Kessler, O. Lahav, R. Morgan, C. Nicolaou, C. ConseliceR. J. Foley, M. S. S. Gill, T. M. C. Abbott, M. Aguena, S. Allam, S. Avila, K. Bechtol, E. Bertin, S. Bhargava, D. Brooks, E. Buckley-Geer, D. L. Burke, M. Carrasco Kind, J. Carretero, F. J. Castander, C. Chang, M. Costanzi, L. N. da Costa, T. M. Davis, S. Desai, H. T. Diehl, P. Doel, A. Drlica-Wagner, J. Estrada, S. Everett, A. E. Evrard, E. Fernandez, D. A. Finley, B. Flaugher, P. Fosalba, J. Frieman, E. Gaztanaga, D. W. Gerdes, D. Gruen, R. A. Gruendl, G. Gutierrez, S. R. Hinton, D. L. Hollowood, K. Honscheid, D. J. James, S. Kent, E. Krause, K. Kuehn, H. Lin, M. A. G. Maia, M. March, J. L. Marshall, P. Melchior, F. Menanteau, R. Miquel, R. L. C. Ogando, F. Paz-Chinchón, A. A. Plazas, A. Roodman, M. Sako, E. Sanchez, V. Scarpine, M. Schubnell, S. Serrano, I. Sevilla-Noarbe, J. Allyn Smith, M. Smith, E. Suchyta, G. Tarle, M. A. Troxel, D. L. Tucker, A. R. Walker, W. Wester, R. D. Wilkinson, J. Zuntz

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Abstract

We present a measurement of the Hubble constant H0 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 H0 constraints from GW170817, the only GW merger associated with a unique host galaxy. From a combination of GW190814, GW170814, and GW170817, our analysis yields H72.0+12-8.2 km s-1 Mpc-1 (68% highest-density interval, HDI) for a prior in H0 uniform between [20and140] km s-1 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.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberL33
Pages (from-to)1-11
Number of pages11
JournalAstrophysical Journal Letters
Volume900
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 10 Sept 2020

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