The Luminosity of the Darkness: Schechter function in dark sirens

Abstract

Gravitational waves (GWs) offer a novel avenue for probing the Universe. One of their exciting applications is the independent measurement of the Hubble constant, $H_0$, using dark standard sirens, which combine GW signals with galaxy catalogues considering that GW events are hosted by galaxies. However, due to the limited reach of telescopes, galaxy catalogues are incomplete at high redshifts. The commonly used GLADE+ is complete only up to redshift $z=0.1$, necessitating a model accounting for the galaxy luminosity distribution accounting for the selection function of galaxies, typically described by the Schechter function. In this paper, we examine the influence of the Schechter function model on dark sirens, focusing on its redshift evolution and its impact on $H_0$ and rate parameters measurements. We find that neglecting the evolution of the Schechter function can influence the prior in redshift on GWs, which has particularly high impact for distant GW events with limited galaxy catalogue support. Moreover, conducting a joint estimation of $H_0$ and the rate parameters, we find that allowing them to vary fixes the bias in $H_0$ but the rate parameter $\gamma$ depends on the evolving Schechter function. Our results underscore the importance of incorporating an evolving Schechter function to account for changes in galaxy populations over cosmic time, as this impacts rate parameters to which $H_0$ is sensitive.

8 pages, 9 figures

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