Calibrating the cosmic distance ladder using gravitational-wave observations

Abstract

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are among preeminent distance ladders for precision cosmology due to their intrinsic brightness, which allows them to be observable at high redshifts. Their usefulness as unbiased estimators of absolute cosmological distances however depends on accurate understanding of their intrinsic brightness, or anchoring their distance scale. This knowledge is based on calibrating their distances with Cepheids. Gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences, being standard sirens, can be used to validate distances to SNe Ia, when both occur in the same galaxy or galaxy cluster. The current measurement of distances by the advanced LIGO and Virgo detector network suffers from large statistical errors ($\sim 50\%$). However, we find that using a third generation gravitational-wave detector network, standard sirens will allow us to measure distances with an accuracy of $\sim 0.1\%$-$3\%$ for sources within $\le 300$ Mpc. These are much smaller than the dominant systematic error of $\sim 5\%$ due to radial peculiar velocity of host galaxies. Therefore, gravitational-wave observations could soon add a new cosmic distance ladder for an independent calibration of distances to SNe Ia.

13 pages, 11 figures; v2: revised version after incorporating referee's comments, matches the version accepted in ApJ

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• Comprehensive analysis of the tidal effect in gravitational waves and implication for cosmology
• Measuring the viscosity of dark matter with strongly lensed gravitational waves
• Binary white dwarfs and decihertz gravitational wave observations: From the Hubble constant to supernova astrophysics
• Detecting Dark Energy Fluctuations with Gravitational Waves
• Calibrating the standard candles with strong lensing
• Constraining runaway dilaton models using joint gravitational-wave and electromagnetic observations
• Optimising the observation of optical kilonovae with medium size telescopes
• Constraining the lensing dispersion from the angular clustering of binary black hole mergers