A Hubble constant measurement from superluminal motion of the jet in GW170817

By K. Hotokezaka, E. Nakar, O. Gottlieb, S. Nissanke, K. Masuda, G. Hallinan, K. Mooley, A. Deller. Nature Astronomy, 2018

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The Hubble constant (H0) measures the current expansion rate of the Universe, and plays a fundamental role in cosmology. Tremendous effort has been dedicated over the past decades to measure H0 (refs. 1–10). Gravitational wave (GW) sources accompanied by electromagnetic (EM) counterparts offer an independent standard siren measurement of H0 (refs. 11–13), as demonstrated following the discovery of the neutron star merger, GW170817 (refs. 14–16). This measurement does not assume a cosmological model and is independent of a cosmic distance ladder. The first joint analysis of the GW signal from GW170817 and its EM localization led to a measurement of $$H_0 = 74_{ - 8}^{ + 16}\,{\mathrm{km}}\,{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}\,{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$$H0=74-8+16kms-1Mpc-1 (median and symmetric 68% credible interval)13. In this analysis, the degeneracy in the GW signal between the source distance and the observing angle dominated the H0 measurement uncertainty. Recently, tight constraints on the observing angle using high angular resolution imaging of the radio counterpart of GW170817 have been obtained17. Here, we report an improved measurement $$H_0 = 70.3_{ - 5.0}^{ + 5.3}\,{\mathrm{km}}\,{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}\,{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$$H0=70.3-5.0+5.3kms-1Mpc-1 by using these new radio observations, combined with the previous GW and EM data. We estimate that 15 more GW170817-like events, having radio images and light curve data, as compared with 50–100 GW events without such data18,19, will potentially resolve the tension between the Planck and Cepheid–supernova measurements.Combining gravitational-wave and electromagnetic data with new radio observations of GW170817, an improved measurement of $$H_0 = 70.3_{-5.0}^{+5.3}\, {\mathrm{km}}\, {\mathrm{s}}^{-1}\,{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$$H0=70.3-5.0+5.3kms-1Mpc-1 is derived. Fifteen more GW170817-like events with radio data could resolve the Hubble constant tension.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/03d31724bd36d331802927500e849d3fe4113a19

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Citations in the corpus

Bayesian inference for compact binary coalescences with bilby: validation and application to the first LIGO–Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalogue (2020, background): “…2017e) can give an even richer understanding, enabling measurements of cosmological parameters (Abbott et al. 2017d, 2019d; Cantiello et al. 2018; Hotokezaka et al. 2019; Dhawan et al. 2020; Chen et al. 2018), insights into the structures of gamma-ray bursts (Abbott et al. 2017f; Mooley et al.…”
Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory: A kilohertz-band gravitational-wave detector in the global network (2020, background): “…leading to an enhanced understanding of their population properties (Abbott et al. 2019d), measurement of the Hubble parameter (Abbott et al. 2017d; Hotokezaka et al. 2019), unprecedented tests of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, including constraints on the speed of gravity (Abbott et al.…”
Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Mass Ejection, Electromagnetic Counterparts, and Nucleosynthesis (2018, methodology): “…et al. 2016; Abbott et al. 2017c; Baker et al. 2017; Pardo et al. 2018; Visinelli et al. 2018), cosmological parameters (Abbott et al. 2017a; Hotokezaka et al. 2018c), the equation of state (EOS) of NSs (Bauswein et al. 2017; Margalit & Metzger 2017; Shibata et al. 2017a; Abbott et al.…”
Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows in the Multimessenger Era: Numerical Models and Closure Relations (2019, methodology): “Hotokezaka et al. (2019) find a very tight constraint for the viewing angle, q = 0.29 0.01 radobs and q = 0.30obs 0.01 rad, for their power-law and Gaussian models, respectively.”
Dark Energy in Light of Multi-Messenger Gravitational-Wave Astronomy (2018, background): “Observations of the afterglow in different frequencies can help in reducing the inclination uncertainty (Guidorzi et al., 2017; Hotokezaka et al., 2018).”
Hubble Tension: The Evidence of New Physics (2023, methodology): “H0 measurements in the late-time universe derived from other independent observations which include quasar lensing [37,143,165–172], FRB [152,153,156], GW [149,151,191,192], TRGB [157–159]”
A buyer’s guide to the Hubble constant (2021, unknown): “Hotokezaka et al. (2019) improved this to H0 = 70.3 +5.3 −5.0km s −1 Mpc−1 by constraining i with observations of the interaction of the ejecta with the ISM.”