Talk detail

Participant	Li, Tjonnie
Institution	Nikhef - Science Park 105 - Amsterdam - Noord-Holland - Netherland

Session	GW2	Accepted		Order	Time
Talk	Oral abstract	Title	Gravitational waves as independent cosmological probes
Co-authors
Abstract	The operation of 2nd generation gravitational wave (GW) detectors, Advanced LIGO/Virgo in 2015, and the proposed 3rd generation detector, Einstein Telescope (ET) in 2025, will usher in a new era of astronomy. In particular, GWs from binary neutron stars (NS) and/or black holes (BH) will allow us to measure the luminosity distance without the aid of a cosmic distance ladder. Coupled with a redshift measurement, these sources can be used as cosmological probes. Therefore, our challenge is to obtain redshift information. I will explore two possible methods for determining the redshift of a GW source without the need of a direct electromagnetic counterpart. Firstly, I will demonstrate the statistical use of a galaxy catalogue, relaxing the need to have direct redshift information of the source. Secondly, I will show that direct redshift information can be obtained by studying the tidal deformability of NSs in binary systems. Simulations with Advanced LIGO/Virgo and ET indicate that the proposed methods can yield results that are competitive with electromagnetic measurements, allowing us to bypass the cosmic distance ladder and make independent cosmological measurements.