Using Gravitational‐Wave Standard Sirens

Abstract

Gravitational waves (GWs) from supermassive binary black hole (BBH) in-spirals are potentially powerful standard sirens (the GW analog to standard candles; see work of B. Schutz). Because these systems are well modeled, the space-based GW observatory LISA will be able to measure the luminosity distance (but not the redshift) to some distant massive BBH systems with 1%-10% accuracy. This accuracy is largely limited by pointing error: GW sources are generally poorly localized on the sky. Localizing the binary independently (e.g., through association with an electromagnetic counterpart) greatly reduces this positional error. An electromagnetic counterpart may also allow determination of the event's redshift. In this case, BBH coalescence would constitute an extremely precise (better than 1%) standard candle visible to high redshift. In practice, gravitational lensing degrades this precision, although the candle remains precise enough to provide useful information about the distance-redshift relation. Even if very rare, these GW standard sirens would complement, and increase confidence in, other standard candles.