Kavli Affiliate: Daniel E. Holz
| First 5 Authors: Jose María Ezquiaga, Daniel E. Holz, , ,
| Summary:
We explore the use of the mass spectrum of neutron stars and black holes in
gravitational-wave compact binary sources as a cosmological probe. These
standard siren sources provide direct measurements of luminosity distance. In
addition, features in the mass distribution, such as mass gaps or peaks, will
redshift, and thus provide independent constraints on their redshift
distribution. We argue that the mass spectrum of LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA events
introduces at least five independent mass "features": the upper and lower edges
of the pair instability supernova (PISN) gap, the upper and lower edges of the
neutron star-black hole gap, and the minimum neutron star mass. We find that
the PISN gap dominates the cosmological inference with current detectors (2G),
as shown in previous work. We further argue that the lower mass gap will
provide the most powerful constraints in the era of Cosmic Explorer and
Einstein Telescope (3G). We demonstrate that degeneracies between redshift
evolution of the source masses and cosmology can be broken, unless an
astrophysical conspiracy shifts all features of the full mass distribution
simultaneously following the (non-trivial) Hubble diagram evolution. We find
that this "spectral siren" method has the potential to constrain both cosmology
and the evolution of the mass distribution, with 2G achieving better than
$10%$ precision on $H(z)$ at $zlesssim1$ within a year, and 3G reaching
$lesssim1%$ at $zgtrsim2$ within one month.
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