A standard siren measurement of the Hubble constant from GW170817 without the electromagnetic counterpart

Fishbach, M. et al. (2019) A standard siren measurement of the Hubble constant from GW170817 without the electromagnetic counterpart. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 871(1), L13. (doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/aaf96e)

Abstract

We perform a statistical standard siren analysis of GW170817. Our analysis does not utilize knowledge of NGC 4993 as the unique host galaxy of the optical counterpart to GW170817. Instead, we consider each galaxy within the GW170817 localization region as a potential host; combining the redshifts from all of the galaxies with the distance estimate from GW170817 provides an estimate of the Hubble constant, H 0 . Considering all galaxies brighter than as equally likely to host a binary neutron star merger, we find km s -1 Mpc -1 (maximum a posteriori and 68.3% highest density posterior interval; assuming a flat H 0 prior in the range km s -1 Mpc -1 ). We explore the dependence of our results on the thresholds by which galaxies are included in our sample, and we show that weighting the host galaxies by stellar mass or star formation rate provides entirely consistent results with potentially tighter constraints. By applying the method to simulated gravitational-wave events and a realistic galaxy catalog we show that, because of the small localization volume, this statistical standard siren analysis of GW170817 provides an unusually informative (top 10%) constraint. Under optimistic assumptions for galaxy completeness and redshift uncertainty, we find that dark binary neutron star measurements of H 0 will converge as , where N is the number of sources. While these statistical estimates are inferior to the value from the counterpart standard siren measurement utilizing NGC 4993 as the unique host, km s -1 Mpc -1 (determined from the same publicly available data), our analysis is a proof-of-principle demonstration of the statistical approach first proposed by Bernard Schutz over 30 yr ago

• Item Type: Articles (Letter)
• Additional Information: M.F. was supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant DGE-1746045. M.F. and D.E.H. were supported by NSF grant PHY-1708081. They were also supported by the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago through NSF grant PHY-1125897 and an endowment from the Kavli Foundation. D.E.H. also gratefully acknowledges support from a Marion and Stuart Rice Award. The authors acknowledge the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector and the creation and support of the EGO consortium. We are grateful to the LIGO and Virgo collaborations for releasing sky map data for GW170817 at dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-P1800061/public.
• Keywords: Distance scale, gravitational waves
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Messenger, Dr Christopher and Gray, Rachel and Veitch, Dr John and Hendry, Professor Martin and Datrier, Ms Laurence
• Authors: Fishbach, M., Gray, R., Magaña Hernandez, I., Qi, H., Sur, A., Acernese, F., Aiello, L., Allocca, A., Aloy, M. A., Amato, A., Antier, S., Arène, M., Arnaud, N., Ascenzi, S., Astone, P., Aubin, F., Babak, S., Bacon, P., Badaracco, F., Bader, M. K. M., Baldaccini, F., Ballardin, G., Barone, F., Barsuglia, M., Barta, D., Basti, A., Bawaj, M., Bazzan, M., Bejger, M., Belahcene, I., Bernuzzi, S., Bersanetti, D., Bertolini, A., Bitossi, M., Bizouard, M. A., Blair, C. D., Bloemen, S., Boer, M., Bogaert, G., Bondu, F., Bonnand, R., Boom, B. A., Boschi, V., Bouffanais, Y., Bozzi, A., Bradaschia, C., Brady, P. R., Branchesi, M., Briant, T., Brighenti, F., Brillet, A., Brisson, V., Bulik, T., Bulten, H.J., Buskulic, D., Buy, C., Cagnoli, G., Calloni, E., Canepa, M., Capocasa, E., Carbognani, F., Carullo, G., Diaz, J.C., Casentini, C., Caudill, S., Cavalier, F., Cavalieri, R., Cella, G., Cerdá-Durán, P., Cerretani, G., Cesarini, E., Chaibi, O., Chassande-Mottin, E., Chatziioannou, K., Chen, H.Y., Chincarini, A., Chiummo, A., Christensen, N., Chua, S., Ciani, G., Ciolfi, R., Cipriano, F., Cirone, A., Cleva, F., Coccia, E., Cohadon, P.-F., Cohen, D., Conti, L., Cordero-Carrión, I., Cortese, S., Coughlin, M.W., Coulon, J.-P., Croquette, M., Cuoco, E., Dálya, G., D’Antonio, S., Datrier, L.E.H., Dattilo, V., Davier, M., Degallaix, J., Laurentis, M. D., Deléglise, S., Pozzo, W. D., Denys, M., Pietri, R. D., Rosa, R. D., Rossi, C. D., DeSalvo, R., Dietrich, T., Fiore, L. D., Giovanni, M. D., Girolamo, T. D., Lieto, A. D., Pace, S. D., Palma, I. D., Renzo, F. D., Doctor, Z., Drago, M., Ducoin, J.-G., Eisenmann, M., Essick, R. C., Estevez, D., Fafone, V., Farinon, S., Farr, W.M., Feng, F., Ferrante, I., Ferrini, F., Fidecaro, F., Fiori, I., Fiorucci, D., Flaminio, R., Font, J.A., Fournier, J.-D., Frasca, S., Frasconi, F., Frey, V., Gair, J.R., Gammaitoni, L., Garufi, F., Gemme, G., Genin, E., Gennai, A., George, D., Germain, V., Ghosh, A., Giacomazzo, B., Giazotto, A., Giordano, G., Castro, J. M. G., Gosselin, M., Gouaty, R., Grado, A., Granata, M., Greco, G., Groot, P., Gruning, P., Guidi, G.M., Guo, Y., Halim, O., Harms, J., Haster, C.-J., Heidmann, A., Heitmann, H., Hello, P., Hemming, G., Hendry, M., Hinderer, T., Hoak, D., Hofman, D., Holz, D.E., Hreibi, A., Huet, D., Idzkowski, B., Iess, A., Intini, G., Isac, J.-M., Jacqmin, T., Jaranowski, P., Jonker, R.J.G., Katsanevas, S., Katsavounidis, E., Kéfélian, F., Khan, I., Koekoek, G., Koley, S., Kowalska, I., Królak, A., Kutynia, A., Lange, J., Lartaux-Vollard, A., Lazzaro, C., Leaci, P., Letendre, N., Li, T.G.F., Linde, F., Longo, A., Lorenzini, M., Loriette, V., Losurdo, G., Lumaca, D., Macas, R., Macquet, A., Majorana, E., Maksimovic, I., Man, N., Mantovani, M., Marchesoni, F., Markakis, C., Marquina, A., Martelli, F., Massera, E., Masserot, A., Mastrogiovanni, S., Meidam, J., Mereni, L., Merzougui, M., Messenger, C., Metzdorff, R., Michel, C., Milano, L., Miller, A., Minazzoli, O., Minenkov, Y., Montani, M., Morisaki, S., Mours, B., Nagar, A., Nardecchia, I., Naticchioni, L., Nelemans, G., Nichols, D., Nocera, F., Obergaulinger, M., Pagano, G., Palomba, C., Pannarale, F., Paoletti, F., Paoli, A., Pasqualetti, A., Passaquieti, R., Passuello, D., Patil, M., Patricelli, B., Pedurand, R., Perreca, A., Piccinni, O.J., Pichot, M., Piergiovanni, F., Pillant, G., Pinard, L., Poggiani, R., Popolizio, P., Prodi, G.A., Punturo, M., Puppo, P., Radulescu, N., Raffai, P., Rapagnani, P., Raymond, V., Razzano, M., Regimbau, T., Rei, L., Ricci, F., Rocchi, A., Rolland, L., Romanelli, M., Romano, R., Rosińska, D., Ruggi, P., Salconi, L., Samajdar, A., Sanchis-Gual, N., Sassolas, B., Schutz, B.F., Sentenac, D., Sequino, V., Sieniawska, M., Singh, N., Singhal, A., Sorrentino, F., Stachie, C., Steer, D.A., Stratta, G., Swinkels, B.L., Tacca, M., Tamanini, N., Tiwari, S., Tonelli, M., Torres-Forné, A., Travasso, F., Tringali, M.C., Trovato, A., Trozzo, L., Tsang, K.W., Bakel, N. v., Beuzekom, M. v., Brand, J.F.J. v. d., Broeck, C. V. D., Schaaf, L. v. d., Heijningen, J.V. v., Vardaro, M., Vasúth, M., Vedovato, G., Veitch, J., Verkindt, D., Vetrano, F., Viceré, A., Vinet, J.-Y., Vocca, H., Walet, R., Wang, G., Wang, Y.F., Was, M., Williamson, A.R., Yvert, M., Zadrożny, A., Zelenova, T., Zendri, J.-P., and Zimmerman, A.B.
• Subjects: Q Science > QB Astronomy
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering; 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
• Research Group: Institute for Gravitational Research
• Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Letters
• Publisher: American Astronomical Society
• ISSN: 2041-8205
• ISSN (Online): 2041-8213
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019 The American Astronomical Society
• First Published: First published in Astrophysical Journal Letters 871(1):L13
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

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