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arXiv · 2410.14663

On the use of galaxy catalogs in gravitational-wave parameter estimation

Geoffrey Mo·Carl-Johan Haster·Erik Katsavounidis
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Abstract

A major challenge in gravitational-wave multi-messenger astrophysics is the imprecise localization of gravitational-wave compact binary mergers. We investigate the use of a method to include galaxy catalog information in performing parameter estimation of these events. We test its effectiveness with the gravitational-wave events GW170817, GW190425, and GW190814, as well as with simulated binary neutron star mergers. For GW170817, we recover the true host galaxy as the most probable galaxy after a straightforward mass reweighting, with significantly decreased localization area and volume. On the simulated sample, however, we do not find improvement compared to performing a simple galaxy catalog crossmatch with a regular gravitational wave localization. Future investigations into sampling methods may yield improvements that increase the viability of this method.

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Geoffrey Mo, Carl-Johan Haster, Erik Katsavounidis. 2024-10-18. On the use of galaxy catalogs in gravitational-wave parameter estimation. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357%2Fad9f36

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