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arXiv · 2604.03163

Cosmological Constraints from Gravitational Wave-Fast Radio Burst Associations without Redshift Measurements for LIGO-Virgo and Cosmic Explorer

Jiaming Zhuge·Marios Kalomenopoulos·Carl-Johan Haster·Bing Zhang
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Abstract

The potential association between gravitational waves (GWs) and fast radio bursts (FRBs) offers a unique multi-messenger probe for cosmology. In this paper, we develop a redshift-independent framework to constrain cosmological parameters using the luminosity distance - dispersion measure relation, accounting for realistic astrophysical uncertainties. We perform a comprehensive comparative analysis across different GWs detector sensitivities and modeling assumptions. Specifically, we investigate the performance of the current LIGO-Virgo (LV) network (at $z < 0.2$) versus the future Cosmic Explorer (CE). Our study further evaluates the impact of different dispersion measure (DM) distributions---specifically the corrected Macquart's PDF (Zhuge+2025) and the log-normal distribution---and explores the influence of including or excluding host galaxy DM contributions. Using realistic simulated observations, we find that while the current LV network lacks the precision to provide meaningful constraints, CE will enable high-precision cosmology. Even without spectroscopic redshifts, CE observations can effectively break parameter degeneracies and robustly constrain both cosmology and host galaxy parameters. These results highlight the necessity of next-generation detectors.

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Jiaming Zhuge, Marios Kalomenopoulos, Carl-Johan Haster, Bing Zhang. 2026-04-03. Cosmological Constraints from Gravitational Wave-Fast Radio Burst Associations without Redshift Measurements for LIGO-Virgo and Cosmic Explorer. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357%2Fae84c4

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