Hearing gravity from the cosmos: GWTC-2 probes general relativity at cosmological scales

• Main Author: Jose María Ezquiaga
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2021-11-01
• Series: Physics Letters B
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269321006055

Gravitational-wave (GW) catalogs are rapidly increasing in number, allowing for Image 1 statistical analyses of the population of compact binaries. Nonetheless, GW inference of cosmology has typically relied on additional electromagnetic counterparts or galaxy catalogs. I present a new probe of cosmological modifications of general relativity with GW data only. I focus on deviations of the GW luminosity distance constrained with the astrophysical population of binary black holes (BBHs). The three key observables are 1) the number of events as a function of luminosity distance, 2) the stochastic GW background of unresolved binaries and 3) the location of any feature in the source mass distribution, such as the pair instability supernova (PISN) gap. Modifications of the GW luminosity distance are a priori degenerate with the unknown evolution of the merger rate and source masses. However, a large damping of the GW amplitude predicts a reduction of the events and lowering of the edges of the PISN gap with redshift that is against standard astrophysical expectations. Applying a hierarchical Bayesian analysis to the current LIGO–Virgo catalog (GWTC-2), the strongest constraints to date are placed on deviations from the GW luminosity distance, finding cM=−3.2−2.0+3.4 at 68% C.L., which is ∼10 times better than multi-messenger GW170817 bounds. These modifications also affect the determination of the BBH masses, which is crucial to accommodate the high-mass binary GW190521 away from the PISN gap. In this analysis it is found that the maximum mass of 99% of the population shifts to lower masses with increased uncertainty, m99%=46.2−9.1+11.4M⊙ at 68% C.L. Testing gravity at large scales with the population of BBHs will become increasingly relevant with future catalogs, providing an independent and self-contained test of the standard cosmological model.