A Statistical Standard Siren Measurement of the Hubble Constant from the LIGO/Virgo Gravitational Wave Compact Object Merger GW190814 and Dark Energy Survey Galaxies
A. Palmese, deVicente, J, Pereira, MES, Annis, J, Hartley, W, Herner, K, Soares-Santos, M, Crocce, M, Huterer, D, Magana Hernandez, I, Garcia, A, Garcia-Bellido, J, Gschwend, J, Holz, DE, Kessler, R, Lahav, O, Morgan, R, Nicolaou, C, Conselice, C, Foley, RJ, Gill, MSS, Abbott, TMC, Aguena, M, Allam, S, Avila, S, Bechtol, K, Bertin, E, Bhargava, S, Brooks, D, Buckley-Geer, E, Burke, DL, Kind, MC, Carretero, J, Castander, FJ, Chang, C, Costanzi, M, Costa, LND, Davis, TM, Desai, S, Diehl, HT, Doel, P, Drlica-Wagner, A, Estrada, J, Everett, S, Evrard, AE, Fernandez, E, Finley, DA, Flaugher, B, Fosalba, P, Frieman, J, Gaztanaga, E, Gerdes, DW, Gruen, D, Gruendl, RA, Gutierrez, G, Hinton, SR, Hollowood, DL, Honscheid, K, James, DJ, Kent, S, Krause, E, Kuehn, K, Lin, H, Maia, MAG, March, M, Marshall, JL, Melchior, P, Menanteau, F, Miquel, R, Ogando, RLC, Paz-Chinchon, F, Plazas, AA, Roodman, A, Sako, M, Sanchez, E, Scarpine, V, Schubnell, M, Serrano, S, Sevilla-Noarbe, I, Smith, JA, Smith, M, Suchyta, E, Tarle, G, Troxel, MA, Tucker, DL, Walker, AR, Wester, W, Wilkinson, RD, Zuntz, J
Abstract
We present a measurement of the Hubble constant H0 using the gravitational wave (GW) event GW190814, which resulted from the coalescence of a 23 M⊙ black hole with a 2.6 M⊙ compact object, as a standard siren. No compelling electromagnetic counterpart has been identified for this event; thus our analysis accounts for thousands of potential host galaxies within a statistical framework. The redshift information is obtained from the photometric redshift (photo-z) catalog from the Dark Energy Survey. The luminosity distance is provided by the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave sky map. Since this GW event has the second-smallest localization volume after GW170817, GW190814 is likely to provide the best constraint on cosmology from a single standard siren without identifying an electromagnetic counterpart. Our analysis uses photo-z probability distribution functions and corrects for photo-z biases. We also reanalyze the binary black hole GW170814 within this updated framework. We explore how our findings impact the H0 constraints from GW170817, the only GW merger associated with a unique host galaxy. From a combination of GW190814, GW170814, and GW170817, our analysis yields ${H}_{0}={72.0}_{-8.2}^{+12}\\,\\mathrm{km}\\,{{\\rm{s}}}^{-1}\\,{\\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$(68% highest-density interval, HDI) for a prior in H0 uniform between $[20\\mathrm{and}140]\\,\\mathrm{km}\\,{{\\rm{s}}}^{-1}\\,{\\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$. The addition of GW190814 and GW170814 to GW170817 improves the 68% HDI from GW170817 alone by ~18%, showing how well-localized mergers without counterparts can provide a significant contribution to standard siren measurements, provided that a complete galaxy catalog is available at the location of the event.