Mitigating the counterpart selection effect for standard sirens

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chen, Hsin-Yu, Talbot, Colm, Chase, Eve A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866913337277677568
author Chen, Hsin-Yu
Talbot, Colm
Chase, Eve A.
author_facet Chen, Hsin-Yu
Talbot, Colm
Chase, Eve A.
contents The disagreement in the Hubble constant measured by different cosmological probes highlights the need for a better understanding of the observations or new physics. The standard siren method, a novel approach using gravitational-wave observations to determine the distance to binary mergers, has great potential to provide an independent measurement of the Hubble constant and shed light on the tension in the next few years. To realize this goal, we must thoroughly understand the sources of potential systematic bias of standard sirens. Among the known sources of systematic uncertainties, selection effects originating from electromagnetic counterpart observations of gravitational-wave sources may dominate the measurements with percent-level bias and no method to mitigate this effect is currently established. In this Letter, we develop a new formalism to mitigate the counterpart selection effect. We show that our formalism can reduce the systematic uncertainty of standard siren Hubble constant measurement to less than the statistical uncertainty with a simulated population of 200 observations ($\lesssim 1\%$) for a realistic electromagnetic emission model. We conclude with how to apply our formalism to different electromagnetic emissions and observing scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2307_10402
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mitigating the counterpart selection effect for standard sirens
Chen, Hsin-Yu
Talbot, Colm
Chase, Eve A.
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
The disagreement in the Hubble constant measured by different cosmological probes highlights the need for a better understanding of the observations or new physics. The standard siren method, a novel approach using gravitational-wave observations to determine the distance to binary mergers, has great potential to provide an independent measurement of the Hubble constant and shed light on the tension in the next few years. To realize this goal, we must thoroughly understand the sources of potential systematic bias of standard sirens. Among the known sources of systematic uncertainties, selection effects originating from electromagnetic counterpart observations of gravitational-wave sources may dominate the measurements with percent-level bias and no method to mitigate this effect is currently established. In this Letter, we develop a new formalism to mitigate the counterpart selection effect. We show that our formalism can reduce the systematic uncertainty of standard siren Hubble constant measurement to less than the statistical uncertainty with a simulated population of 200 observations ($\lesssim 1\%$) for a realistic electromagnetic emission model. We conclude with how to apply our formalism to different electromagnetic emissions and observing scenarios.
title Mitigating the counterpart selection effect for standard sirens
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.10402