The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy catalog approach for gravitational wave cosmology
Jonathan R. Gair
(1)
,
Archisman Ghosh
(2)
,
Rachel Gray
(3)
,
Daniel E. Holz
(4)
,
Simone Mastrogiovanni
(5)
,
Suvodip Mukherjee
(6)
,
Antonella Palmese
(7, 8)
,
Nicola Tamanini
(9)
,
Tessa Baker
(4)
,
Freija Beirnaert
(2)
,
Maciej Bilicki
(10)
,
Hsin-Yu Chen
(11, 12, 13)
,
Gergely Dálya
(2)
,
Jose Maria Ezquiaga
(14)
,
Will M. Farr
(15, 16)
,
Maya Fishbach
(17)
,
Juan Garcia-Bellido
(18)
,
Tathagata Ghosh
(19)
,
Hsiang-Yu Huang
(20)
,
Christos Karathanasis
(21)
,
Konstantin Leyde
(22)
,
Ignacio Magaña Hernandez
(23)
,
Johannes Noller
(24, 25)
,
Gregoire Pierra
(26)
,
Peter Raffai
(27)
,
Antonio Enea Romano
(28)
,
Monica Seglar-Arroyo
(21)
,
Danièle A. Steer
(22, 29)
,
Cezary Turski
(2)
,
Maria Paola Vaccaro
(21)
,
Sergio Andrés Vallejo-Peña
(28)
1
AEI -
Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)
2 UGENT - Universiteit Gent = Ghent University
3 QMUL - Queen Mary University of London
4 University of Chicago
5 INFN - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
6 Tata Institute of Fundamental Research [Bangalore]
7 CMU - Carnegie Mellon University [Pittsburgh]
8 UC Berkeley - University of California [Berkeley]
9 L2IT - Laboratoire des deux Infinis de Toulouse
10 PAN - Polska Akademia Nauk = Polish Academy of Sciences = Académie polonaise des sciences
11 University of Texas at Austin [Austin]
12 Department of Physics [MIT Cambridge]
13 MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
14 NBI - Niels Bohr Institute [Copenhagen]
15 SBU - Stony Brook University [SUNY]
16 Flatiron Institute
17 University of Toronto
18 IFT - Instituto de Física Teórica UAM/CSIC
19 IUCAA - Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics [Pune]
20 NCU - National Central University [Taiwan]
21 IFAE - Institut de Física d’Altes Energies [Barcelone]
22 APC (UMR_7164) - AstroParticule et Cosmologie
23 University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
24 University of Portsmouth
25 DAMTP - Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
26 IP2I Lyon - Institut de Physique des 2 Infinis de Lyon
27 ELTE - Eötvös Loránd University
28 Universidad de Antioquia = University of Antioquia [Medellín, Colombia]
29 Cosmologie et Gravitation
2 UGENT - Universiteit Gent = Ghent University
3 QMUL - Queen Mary University of London
4 University of Chicago
5 INFN - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
6 Tata Institute of Fundamental Research [Bangalore]
7 CMU - Carnegie Mellon University [Pittsburgh]
8 UC Berkeley - University of California [Berkeley]
9 L2IT - Laboratoire des deux Infinis de Toulouse
10 PAN - Polska Akademia Nauk = Polish Academy of Sciences = Académie polonaise des sciences
11 University of Texas at Austin [Austin]
12 Department of Physics [MIT Cambridge]
13 MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
14 NBI - Niels Bohr Institute [Copenhagen]
15 SBU - Stony Brook University [SUNY]
16 Flatiron Institute
17 University of Toronto
18 IFT - Instituto de Física Teórica UAM/CSIC
19 IUCAA - Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics [Pune]
20 NCU - National Central University [Taiwan]
21 IFAE - Institut de Física d’Altes Energies [Barcelone]
22 APC (UMR_7164) - AstroParticule et Cosmologie
23 University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
24 University of Portsmouth
25 DAMTP - Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
26 IP2I Lyon - Institut de Physique des 2 Infinis de Lyon
27 ELTE - Eötvös Loránd University
28 Universidad de Antioquia = University of Antioquia [Medellín, Colombia]
29 Cosmologie et Gravitation
Résumé
We outline the ``dark siren'' galaxy catalog method for cosmological inference using gravitational wave (GW) standard sirens, clarifying some common misconceptions in the implementation of this method. When a confident transient electromagnetic counterpart to a GW event is unavailable, the identification of a unique host galaxy is in general challenging. Instead, as originally proposed by Schutz (1986), one can consult a galaxy catalog and implement a dark siren statistical approach incorporating all potential host galaxies within the localization volume. Trott & Hunterer 2021 recently claimed that this approach results in a biased estimate of the Hubble constant, $H_0$, when implemented on mock data, even if optimistic assumptions are made. We demonstrate explicitly that, as previously shown by multiple independent groups, the dark siren statistical method leads to an unbiased posterior when the method is applied to the data correctly. We highlight common sources of error possible to make in the generation of mock data and implementation of the statistical framework, including the mismodeling of selection effects and inconsistent implementations of the Bayesian framework, which can lead to a spurious bias.