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

• Published in: arXiv.org 2020-12
• Main Authors: Palmese, A, deVicente, J, Pereira, M E S, Annis, J, Hartley, W, Herner, K, Soares-Santos, M, Crocce, M, Huterer, D, I Magana Hernandez, Davis, T M, Garcia, A, Garcia-Bellido, J, Gschwend, J, Holz, D E, Kessler, R, Lahav, O, Morgan, R, Nicolaou, C, Conselice, C, Foley, R J, Gill, M S S, Abbott, T M C, Aguena, M, Allam, S, Avila, S, Bechtol, K, Bertin, E, Bhargava, S, Brooks, D, Buckley-Geer, E, Burke, D L, M Carrasco Kind, Carretero, J, Castander, F J, Chang, C, Costanzi, M, da Costa, L N, Desai, S, Diehl, H T, Doel, P, Estrada, J, Everett, S, Evrard, A E, Fernandez, E, Finley, D A, Flaugher, B, Fosalba, P, Frieman, J, Gaztanaga, E, Gerdes, D W, Gruen, D, Gruendl, R A, Gutierrez, G, Hinton, S R, Hollowood, D L, Honscheid, K, James, D J, Kent, S, Krause, E, Kuehn, K, Lin, H, Maia, M A G, March, M, Marshall, J L, Melchior, P, Menanteau, F, Miquel, R, Ogando, R L C, Paz-Chinchon, F, Plazas, A A, 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, M A, Tucker, D L, Walker, A R, Wester, W, Wilkinson, R D, Zuntz, J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Astronomical maps; Coalescing; Cosmology; Dark energy; Distribution functions; Galaxies; Gravitation; Gravitational waves; Hubble constant; Luminosity; Probability distribution functions; Red shift; Sky surveys (astronomy); Stars & galaxies; Statistical analysis
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2006.14961

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 \(M_\odot\) black hole with a 2.6 \(M_\odot\) 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 \(H_0 = 72.0^{+ 12}_{- 8.2 }~{\rm km~s^{-1}~Mpc^{-1}}\) (68\% Highest Density Interval, HDI) for a prior in \(H_0\) uniform between \([20,140]~{\rm km~s^{-1}~Mpc^{-1}}\). The addition of GW190814 and GW170814 to GW170817 improves the 68\% HDI from GW170817 alone by \(\sim 18\%\), 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.