Exploring the potentiality of standard sirens to probe cosmic opacity at high redshifts

Xiangyun Fu,Zhaoxia Chen,Jun Chen,Jianfei Yang,Lu Zhou

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-08479-6

Abstract

In this work, using the Gaussian process, we explore the potentiality of future gravitational wave (GW) measurements to probe cosmic opacity at high redshifts through comparing its opacity-free luminosity distance (LD) with the opacity-dependent one from the combination of Type Ia supernovae (SNIa) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The GW data, SNIa and GRB data are simulated from the measurements of the future Einstein Telescope, the actual Pantheon compilation and the latest observation of GRBs compiled by Amati et al, respectively. A nonparametric method is proposed to probe the spatial homogeneity of cosmic transparency at high redshift by comparing the LD reconstructed from the GW data with that reconstructed from the Pantheon and GRB data. In addition, the cosmic opacity is tested by using the parametrization for the optical depth, and the results show that the constraints on cosmic opacity are more stringent than the previous ones. It shows that the future GW measurements may be used as an important tool to probe the cosmic opacity in the high redshift region.

Highlights

The extinction effect of SNIa has a great impact on the conclusion of cosmic accelerating expansion [4–8]
Wave propagates freely in a perfect fluid without any absorption and dissipation, the measurement of the luminosity distance to a gravitational wave (GW) source provides us with the opacity-free distance to probe cosmic opacity
In this work, using the Gaussian process, we explore the potentiality of future gravitational wave measurements to probe the cosmic opacity at high redshift through comparing luminosity distance (LD) from GW with that from the combination of the SNIa and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) compilations

Summary

Introduction

The extinction effect of SNIa has a great impact on the conclusion of cosmic accelerating expansion [4–8]. As the cosmic acceleration rate and the cosmological parameters determined by the LD measurements are highly dependent on the dimming effect, cosmic opacity still needs to be investigated accurately in the era of precision cosmology. C (2020) 80:893 binaries encode distance information, the Hubble constant can be determined from GW observations This type of GW sources can be considered as standard sirens in astronomy, analogous to SNIa standard candles. The simulated GW data have been used to measure the cosmological parameters [40–50], determine the total mass of neutrino [51], investigate the anisotropy of the Universe [52,53], constrain the evolving Newton’s constant G [54], discuss the estimation of the Hubble parameter with the actual background expansion model of the universe [55,56], and test the CDDR [57–59]

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion