Exploring the distance-redshift relation with gravitational wave standard sirens and tomographic weak lensing

Abstract

Gravitational waves from inspiraling compact objects provide us with information of the distance scale since we can infer the absolute luminosity of the source from analysis of the wave form, which is known as standard sirens. The first detection of the gravitational wave signal of the binary black hole merger event by Advanced LIGO has opened up the possibility of utilizing standard sirens as cosmological probe. In order to extract information of the distance-redshift relation, we cross-correlate weak lensing, which is an unbiased tracer of matter distribution in the Universe, with the projected number density of gravitational wave sources. For weak lensing, we employ tomography technique to efficiently obtain information of large-scale structures at wide ranges of redshifts. Making use of the cross-correlations along with the auto-correlations, we present forecast of constraints on four cosmological parameters, i.e., Hubble parameter, matter density, the equation of state parameter of dark energy, and the amplitude of matter fluctuation. To fully explore the ability of cross-correlations, which require large overlapping sky coverage, we consider the specific case with the upcoming surveys by \textit{Euclid} for weak lensing and Einstein Telescope for standard sirens. We show that cosmological parameters can be tightly constrained solely by these auto- and cross-correlations of standard sirens and weak lensing. For example, the $1\text{-}\sigma$ error of Hubble parameter is expected to be $\sigma (H_0) = 0.33 \, \mathrm{km} \, \mathrm{s}^{-1} \, \mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$. Thus, the proposed statistics will be a promising probe into the distance scale.