Forecast cosmological constraints from the number counts of Gravitational Waves events

Abstract

We present a forecast for the upcoming Einstein Telescope (ET) interferometer with two new methods to infer cosmological parameters. We consider the emission of Gravitational Waves (GWs) from compact binary coalescences, whose electromagnetic counterpart is missing, namely Dark Sirens events. Most of the methods used to infer cosmological information from GW observations rely on the availability of a redshift measurement, usually obtained with the help of external data, such as galaxy catalogues used to identify the most likely galaxy to host the emission of the observed GWs. Instead, our approach is based only on the GW survey itself and exploits the information on the distance of the GW rather than on its redshift. Since a large dataset spanning the whole distance interval is expected to fully represent the distribution, we applied our methods to the expected ET's far-reaching measuring capabilities. We simulate a dataset of observations with ET using the package $\text{darksirens}$, assuming an underlying $\Lambda$CDM cosmology, and including the possibility to choose between three possible Star Formation Rate density (SFR) models, also accounting for possible population III stars (PopIII). We test two independent statistical methods: one based on a likelihood approach on the theoretical expectation of observed events, and another applying the $\text{cut-and-count method}$, a simpler method to compare the observed number of events with the predicted counts. Both methods are consistent in their final results, and also show the potential to distinguish an incorrect SFR model from the data, but not the presence of a possible PopIII. Concerning the cosmological parameters, we find instead that ET observations by themselves would suffer from strong degeneracies, but have the potential to significantly contribute to parameter estimation if used in synergy with other surveys.

29 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (22)

• Cosmic Star Formation History
• A Comprehensive Measurement of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant with 1 km/s/Mpc Uncertainty from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SH0ES Team
• GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the Second Part of the Third Observing Run
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-Wave Background
• Challenges for $\Lambda$CDM: An update
• Cobaya: Code for Bayesian Analysis of hierarchical physical models
• Use and Abuse of the Fisher Information Matrix in the Assessment of Gravitational-Wave Parameter-Estimation Prospects
• Science with the Einstein Telescope: a comparison of different designs
• Determination of Dark Energy by the Einstein Telescope: Comparing with CMB, BAO and SNIa Observations
• Cosmology with the lights off: Standard sirens in the Einstein Telescope era
• Estimating cosmological parameters by the simulated data of gravitational waves from the Einstein Telescope
• The Impact of Star Formation and Gamma-Ray Burst Rates at High Redshift on Cosmic Chemical Evolution and Reionization
• Dark Sirens to Resolve the Hubble-Lemaître Tension
• Can we distinguish astrophysical from primordial black holes via the stochastic gravitational wave background?
• Constraints on the distance duality relation with standard sirens
• Simultaneous Inference of Neutron Star Equation of State and the Hubble Constant with a Population of Merging Neutron Stars
• Prospects for measuring the Hubble constant and dark energy using gravitational-wave dark sirens with neutron star tidal deformation
• Comprehensive analysis of the tidal effect in gravitational waves and implication for cosmology
• Dancing in the dark: detecting a population of distant primordial black holes
• Using Gray Sirens to Resolve the Hubble-Lemaître Tension
• Measuring the Hubble constant with coalescences of binary neutron star and neutron star-black hole: bright sirens \& dark sirens
• A Fisher matrix for gravitational-wave population inference

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Primordial gravitational waves: Model effects on time evolution and spectrum