Shapiro, C., Bacon, D., Hendry, M.A. and Hoyle, B. (2010) Delensing gravitational wave standard sirens with shear and flexion maps. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 404(2), pp. 858-866. (doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.16317.x)
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Abstract
Supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) systems are standard sirens – the gravitational wave analogue of standard candles – and if discovered by gravitational wave detectors, they could be used as precise distance indicators. Unfortunately, gravitational lensing will randomly magnify SMBHB signals, seriously degrading any distance measurements. Using a weak lensing map of the SMBHB line of sight, we can estimate its magnification and thereby remove some uncertainty in its distance, a procedure we call ‘delensing’. We find that delensing is significantly improved when galaxy shears are combined with flexion measurements, which reduce small-scale noise in reconstructed magnification maps. Under a Gaussian approximation, we estimate that delensing with a 2D mosaic image from an Extremely Large Telescope could reduce distance errors by about 25–30 per cent for an SMBHB at z= 2. Including an additional wide shear map from a space survey telescope could reduce distance errors by nearly a factor of 2. Such improvement would make SMBHBs considerably more valuable as cosmological distance probes or as a fully independent check on existing probes
| Item Type: | Articles |
|---|---|
| Status: | Published |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Hendry, Professor Martin |
| Authors: | Shapiro, C., Bacon, D., Hendry, M.A., and Hoyle, B. |
| Subjects: | Q Science > QB Astronomy |
| College/School: | College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy |
| Research Centre: | College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy > Institute for Gravitational Research |
| Journal Name: | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society |
| Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd. |
| ISSN: | 0035-8711 |
| ISSN (Online): | 1365-2966 |
| Published Online: | 22 February 2010 |
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