Measurement of the Hubble constant using the Dark Energy Survey Year 6 Gold galaxy catalog and the fourth Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog

Abstract

Gravitational wave standard sirens enable independent measurements of the Hubble constant $H_0$. In the absence of electromagnetic counterparts, the "dark siren" method statistically correlates GW events with potential host galaxies. We present a measurement of $H_0$ using 142 compact binary coalescences from the fourth Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-4.0) combined with the Dark Energy Survey Year 6 Gold photometric galaxy catalog. Using the gwcosmo pipeline, we jointly infer cosmological and GW population parameters. We analyze the impact of galaxy catalog properties on the inference, identifying significant features in the galaxy redshift distribution which can introduce biases. By restricting the galaxy catalog to $0.05<z<0.35$ to maintain consistency with a uniform in comoving volume galaxy distribution, we obtain a result of $H_0 = 70.9^{+22.3}_{-18.6}\;\text{km}\;\text{s}^{-1}\;\text{Mpc}^{-1}$ from dark sirens and $H_0=73.1^{+11.7}_{-8.6}\;\text{km}\;\text{s}^{-1}\;\text{Mpc}^{-1}$ when combined with the bright siren GW170817. This study demonstrates the adaptation of deep galaxy catalogs for GW cosmology, highlighting key challenges and methodologies essential for maximizing the potential of next-generation galaxy surveys.