Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2112.05728

Cosmology and modified gravitational wave propagation from binary black hole population models

Michele Mancarella·Edwin Genoud-Prachex·Michele Maggiore
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

A joint hierarchical Bayesian analysis of the binary black hole (BBH) mass function, merger rate evolution and cosmological parameters can be used to extract information on both the cosmological and population parameters. We extend this technique to include the effect of modified gravitational wave (GW) propagation. We discuss the constraints on the parameter $\Xi_0$ that describes this phenomenon (with $\Xi_0=1$ in General Relativity, GR) using the data from the GWTC-3 catalog. We find the constraints $\Xi_0 = 1.2^{+0.7}_{-0.7}$ with a flat prior on $\Xi_0$, and $\Xi_0 = 1.0^{+0.4}_{-0.8}$ with a prior uniform in $\log\Xi_0$ ($68\%$ C.L., maximum posterior and HDI), which only rely on the presence of a feature in the BBH mass distribution around $\sim 30-45 M_{\odot}$, and are robust to whether or not the event GW190521 is considered an outlier of the population. We then study in more detail the effects of modified GW propagation on population and cosmological analyses for LIGO/Virgo at design sensitivity. For a given data-taking period, the relative error $\Delta\Xi_0/\Xi_0$ has a significant dependence on the fiducial value of $\Xi_0$, since the latter has a strong influence on the detection rate. For five years of data, the accuracy ranges from $\sim 10\%$ on $\Xi_0$ when $\Xi_0=1$ to $\Delta\Xi_0/\Xi_0\sim 20\%$ for $\Xi_0=1.8$ - a large deviation from GR, still consistent with current limits and predicted by viable cosmological models. For the Hubble parameter, we forecast an accuracy of $\Delta H_0/H_0 \sim 20\%$, and an accuracy on $H(z)$ of $\sim7\%$ at a pivot redshift $z_*\sim 0.8$. We finally show that, if Nature is described by a modified gravity theory with a large deviation from the GR value $\Xi_0=1$, such as $\Xi_0=1.8$, analysing the data assuming GR produces a significant bias in the inferred values of the mass scales, Hubble constant, and BBH merger rate.

Explore related subjects

gr-qcastro-ph.COastro-ph.HE

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Michele Mancarella, Edwin Genoud-Prachex, Michele Maggiore. 2021-12-10. Cosmology and modified gravitational wave propagation from binary black hole population models. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.105.064030

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Electrovacuum Black Hole Uniqueness

We prove the black hole uniqueness conjecture in the axially symmetric, stationary, electrovacuum setting, subject to the refined asymptotic analysis of the associated singular harmonic maps, which includes an analyticity hypothesis at the axes. More precisely, it is shown that any asymptotically flat solution of the Einstein--Maxwell equations in this class, with more than one black hole horizon component is either: Majumdar--Papapetrou, up to a duality rotation, in which case all logarithmic angle defects vanish, or every finite axis rod logarithmic angle defect is strictly negative and hence every interaction force is strictly attractive. The proof extends the singular harmonic map method used for vacuum Kerr uniqueness in [18].

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Constraining Modified Mass-to-Horizon Cosmology Through Primordial Inflationary Observables

We investigate slow-roll inflation in a modified cosmological framework inspired by a generalized mass-to-horizon relation (MHR), $M=\gamma {c^2 L^n}/{G}$, where $n$ is a real parameter and $\gamma$ a dimensional constant. Using Padmanabhan's emergence paradigm, we derive the modified Friedmann equations for a flat FRW universe and analyze the dynamics of a canonical scalar field (inflaton) under the slow-roll approximation. We study the resulting inflationary phenomenology for power-law and Starobinsky potentials. For power-law potentials, the MHR modification fails to reconcile these models with current CMB constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. In contrast, Starobinsky inflation exhibits significant sensitivity to deviations from $n=1$. A perturbative analysis ($n=1+\Delta$) yields corrections to inflationary observables. We observe that the scalar power-spectrum normalization, under a fixed-Starobinsky prescription, imposes the stringent constraint $0.960 \lesssim n \lesssim 1.040$ for $N=60$ efolds. This is considerably tighter than spectral-index bounds. Our results establish inflation, particularly Starobinsky-like models, as a sensitive probe of generalized horizon thermodynamics and departures from standard MHR scaling.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

gr-qc↗