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ABSTRACT The jet opening angle and inclination of GW170817 – the first detected binary neutron star merger – were vital to understand its energetics, relation to short gamma-ray bursts, and refinement of the standard siren-based determination of the Hubble constant, H0. These basic quantities were determined through a combination of the radio light curve and Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) measurements of proper motion. In this paper, we discuss and quantify the prospects for the use of radio VLBI observations and observations of scintillation-induced variability to measure the source size and proper motion of merger afterglows, and thereby infer properties of the merger including inclination angle, opening angle, and energetics. We show that these techniques are complementary as they probe different parts of the circum-merger density/inclination angle parameter space and different periods of the temporal evolution of the afterglow. We also find that while VLBI observations will be limited to the very closest events it will be possible to detect scintillation for a large fraction of events beyond the range of current gravitational wave detectors. Scintillation will also be detectable with next-generation telescopes such as the Square Kilometre Array, 2000 antenna Deep Synoptic Array, and the next-generation Very Large Array, for a large fraction of events detected with third-generation gravitational wave detectors. Finally, we discuss prospects for the measurement of the H0 with VLBI observations of neutron star mergers and compare this technique to other standard siren methods.
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Mitigating the Binary Viewing Angle Bias for Standard Sirens
Abstract The inconsistency between experiments in the measurements of the local Universe expansion rate, the Hubble constant, suggests unknown systematics in the existing experiments or new physics. Gravitational-wave standard sirens, a method to independently provide direct measurements of the Hubble constant, have the potential to address this tension. Before that, it is critical to ensure there are no substantial systematics in the standard siren method. A significant systematic has been identified when the viewing angle of the gravitational-wave sources, the compact binary coalescences, was inferred inaccurately from electromagnetic observations of the sources. Such a systematic has led to a more than 10% discrepancy in the standard siren Hubble constant measurements with the observations of binary neutron star merger, GW170817. In this Letter, we develop a new formalism to infer and mitigate this systematic. We demonstrate that the systematic uncertainty of the Hubble constant measurements can be reduced to a level smaller than their statistical uncertainty with 5, 10, and 20 binary neutron star merger observations. We show that our formalism successfully reduces the systematics even if the shape of the biased viewing angle distribution does not follow precisely the model we choose. Our formalism ensures unbiased standard siren Hubble constant measurements when the binary viewing angles are inferred from electromagnetic observations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2308752
- PAR ID:
- 10548104
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.3847
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal Letters
- Volume:
- 974
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2041-8205
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: Article No. L16
- Size(s):
- Article No. L16
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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