Measuring a Cosmological Distance-Redshift Relationship Using Only Gravitational Wave Observations of Binary Neutron Star Coalescences

Abstract

Detection of gravitational waves from the inspiral phase of binary neutron star coalescence will allow us to measure the effects of the tidal coupling in such systems. Tidal effects provide additional contributions to the phase evolution of the gravitational wave signal that break a degeneracy between the system's mass parameters and redshift and thereby allow the simultaneous measurement of both the effective distance and the redshift for individual sources. Using the population of O(10(3)-10(7)) detectable binary neutron star systems predicted for 3rd generation gravitational wave detectors, the luminosity distance-redshift relation can be probed independently of the cosmological distance ladder and independently of electromagnetic observations. We conclude that for a range of representative neutron star equations of state the redshift of such systems can be determined to an accuracy of 8%-40% for z<1 and 9%-65% for 1<z<4.

Sources of Gravitational Waves: Theory and Observations

“…In fact, GW observations might also measure the redshift through galaxy clustering using wide-field galaxy surveys [376,377]. Moreover, tidal effects can be used to determine the source's redshift provided the NS EoS is known [384].…”

Anisotropic mass ejection from black hole-neutron star binaries: Diversity of electromagnetic counterparts

“…Gravitaional waves from BH-NS binaries will enable us to probe the supranuclear-density matter [4,5] and cosmological expansion [6] via the NS tidal effect even without electromagnetic (EM) observation. The imprint of the NS tidal effect is the most prominent when the NS is disrupted outside the BH innermost stable circular orbit [7,8].…”

Constraining the equation of state of nuclear matter with gravitational wave observations: Tidal deformability and tidal disruption

“…As discussed in [23,37], the point particle phase ψ PP and the signal amplitude A 3PN are invariant under the general transformation (f, M, d, t) → (f /ξ, Mξ, dξ, tξ), where ξ = 1 + z. This means that using the point-particle approximation we can only set constraints on the redshifted chirp-mass M z = M(1 + z) and on the luminosity dis-…”