Gravitational-wave Dark Siren Cosmology Systematics from Galaxy Weighting
The detection of GW170817 and the measurement of its redshift from the associated electromagnetic counterpart provided the first gravitational-wave (GW) determination of the Hubble constant ( H _0 ), demonstrating the potential power of standard siren cosmology. In contrast to this “bright siren” ap...
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IOP Publishing
2025-01-01
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad9393 |
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| author | Alexandra G. Hanselman Aditya Vijaykumar Maya Fishbach Daniel E. Holz |
| author_facet | Alexandra G. Hanselman Aditya Vijaykumar Maya Fishbach Daniel E. Holz |
| author_sort | Alexandra G. Hanselman |
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| description | The detection of GW170817 and the measurement of its redshift from the associated electromagnetic counterpart provided the first gravitational-wave (GW) determination of the Hubble constant ( H _0 ), demonstrating the potential power of standard siren cosmology. In contrast to this “bright siren” approach, the “dark siren” approach can be utilized for GW sources in the absence of an electromagnetic counterpart: One considers all galaxies contained within the localization volume as potential hosts. When statistically averaging over the potential host galaxies, weighting them by physically motivated properties (e.g., tracing star formation or stellar mass) could improve convergence. Using mock galaxy catalogs, we explore the impact of these weightings on the measurement of H _0 . We find that incorrect weighting schemes can lead to significant biases due to two effects: the assumption of an incorrect galaxy redshift distribution, and preferentially weighting incorrect host galaxies during the inference. The magnitudes of these biases are influenced by the number of galaxies along each line of sight, the measurement uncertainty in the GW luminosity distance, and correlations in the parameter space of galaxies. We show that the bias may be overcome from improved localization constraints in future GW detectors, a strategic choice of priors or weighting prescription, and by restricting the analysis to a subset of high-signal-to-noise ratio events. We propose the use of hierarchical inference as a diagnostic of incorrectly weighted prescriptions. Such approaches can simultaneously infer the correct weighting scheme and the values of the cosmological parameters, thereby mitigating the bias in dark siren cosmology due to incorrect host-galaxy weighting. |
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| institution | Kabale University |
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| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
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| spelling | doaj-art-9d2f0d2f8f034944820ae100ae89f5802025-01-13T07:41:48ZengIOP PublishingThe Astrophysical Journal1538-43572025-01-019791910.3847/1538-4357/ad9393Gravitational-wave Dark Siren Cosmology Systematics from Galaxy WeightingAlexandra G. Hanselman0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8304-0109Aditya Vijaykumar1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4103-0666Maya Fishbach2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1980-5293Daniel E. Holz3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0175-5064Department of Physics, The University of Chicago , 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA ; aghanselman@uchicago.edu, aditya@utoronto.caDepartment of Physics, The University of Chicago , 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA ; aghanselman@uchicago.edu, aditya@utoronto.ca; Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto , 60 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 3H8, CanadaCanadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto , 60 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 3H8, Canada; David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Department of Physics, 60 St George St, University of Toronto , Toronto, ON M5S 3H8, CanadaDepartment of Physics, The University of Chicago , 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA ; aghanselman@uchicago.edu, aditya@utoronto.ca; Enrico Fermi Institute, The University of Chicago , 933 East 56th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The University of Chicago , 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, The University of Chicago , 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USAThe detection of GW170817 and the measurement of its redshift from the associated electromagnetic counterpart provided the first gravitational-wave (GW) determination of the Hubble constant ( H _0 ), demonstrating the potential power of standard siren cosmology. In contrast to this “bright siren” approach, the “dark siren” approach can be utilized for GW sources in the absence of an electromagnetic counterpart: One considers all galaxies contained within the localization volume as potential hosts. When statistically averaging over the potential host galaxies, weighting them by physically motivated properties (e.g., tracing star formation or stellar mass) could improve convergence. Using mock galaxy catalogs, we explore the impact of these weightings on the measurement of H _0 . We find that incorrect weighting schemes can lead to significant biases due to two effects: the assumption of an incorrect galaxy redshift distribution, and preferentially weighting incorrect host galaxies during the inference. The magnitudes of these biases are influenced by the number of galaxies along each line of sight, the measurement uncertainty in the GW luminosity distance, and correlations in the parameter space of galaxies. We show that the bias may be overcome from improved localization constraints in future GW detectors, a strategic choice of priors or weighting prescription, and by restricting the analysis to a subset of high-signal-to-noise ratio events. We propose the use of hierarchical inference as a diagnostic of incorrectly weighted prescriptions. Such approaches can simultaneously infer the correct weighting scheme and the values of the cosmological parameters, thereby mitigating the bias in dark siren cosmology due to incorrect host-galaxy weighting.https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad9393Gravitational wave astronomyCosmologyHubble constantGravitational wavesGravitational wave sources |
| spellingShingle | Alexandra G. Hanselman Aditya Vijaykumar Maya Fishbach Daniel E. Holz Gravitational-wave Dark Siren Cosmology Systematics from Galaxy Weighting The Astrophysical Journal Gravitational wave astronomy Cosmology Hubble constant Gravitational waves Gravitational wave sources |
| title | Gravitational-wave Dark Siren Cosmology Systematics from Galaxy Weighting |
| title_full | Gravitational-wave Dark Siren Cosmology Systematics from Galaxy Weighting |
| title_fullStr | Gravitational-wave Dark Siren Cosmology Systematics from Galaxy Weighting |
| title_full_unstemmed | Gravitational-wave Dark Siren Cosmology Systematics from Galaxy Weighting |
| title_short | Gravitational-wave Dark Siren Cosmology Systematics from Galaxy Weighting |
| title_sort | gravitational wave dark siren cosmology systematics from galaxy weighting |
| topic | Gravitational wave astronomy Cosmology Hubble constant Gravitational waves Gravitational wave sources |
| url | https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad9393 |
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