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Konstantin Leyde

Publications and source records attributed to Konstantin Leyde.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

No parametrisation, No Problem: A Weakly Modelled Framework to Constrain the Luminosity Distance--Redshift Relation Using Gravitational Wave Sirens

Cosmological tests of general relativity (GR) using gravitational waves (GWs) often rely on parametrised forms of the luminosity distance-redshift ($ d_{\rm L} - z$) relation, which is modified in alternative theories of gravity where the gravitational coupling strength is time-dependent. Although they can lead to stringent results, these parametrisations encapsulate a restricted range of behaviours that may not represent the full variety of modified gravity theories. We present a quasi-model-independent framework to reconstruct deviations from GR in the ratio of the GW to standard electromagnetic luminosity distance. We find that our method can confidently constrain monotonic, irregular, and oscillatory features in the ratio, without biasing population distribution parameters. Applying our framework to GWTC-5 data, we find no deviations from GR. We report that O5-like GW data will not resolve deviations from GR smaller than 30% with our method; however, third generation GW detectors can confidently detect deviations of order 5% to 3$σ$ significance.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

CosmoPyro: Gradients for Gravitational-Wave Cosmology

Gravitational-wave (GW) observations of stellar-mass compact binary coalescences directly measure the source luminosity distance. Combined with the source redshift, these measurements constrain the current expansion rate of the Universe, the Hubble constant, $H_0$, or $h=H_0 / [100 \,{\rm km \,s^{-1} \, Mpc^{-1}}]$. For most GW signals no electromagnetic redshift measurement is expected, but the GW signal itself depends on the redshifted (detector-frame) masses. Assuming a source-frame mass distribution therefore enables a redshift estimate for each source. Combining the redshift estimates with the distance measurements provides a weak constraint on $H_0$ for each individual source that tightens with the number of sources in the catalog. However, the shape of the source-frame mass distribution is not known a priori, and previous work has relied on parametric models (piecewise power-laws with Gaussian components), and one-dimensional Gaussian processes. Here, we introduce CosmoPyro, a fully differentiable hierarchical Bayesian inference code that models the mass distribution using either one- or two-dimensional Gaussian processes. With the latest GW transient catalog (GWTC-5) we find $h = 0.66^{+0.17}_{-0.20}$ and $h = 0.57^{+0.20}_{-0.15}$ (median with $1σ$ uncertainty), for the one- and two-dimensional case, respectively. Despite the noticeably different inferred mass distributions, both models yield $H_0$ values consistent with the latest LVK measurements within $1 σ$. While our main results marginalize over the Gaussian-process power-spectrum hyperparameters, the measurement is also robust against fixing these hyperparameters over a range comparable to their measured uncertainty.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2026

The impact of precession and higher-order multipoles for gravitational wave cosmological inference

Gravitational-wave astronomy presents an exciting opportunity to provide an independent measurement of the expansion rate of the Universe. By combining inferences for the binary component masses and luminosity distances from individual observations, it is possible to infer $H_0$ without direct electromagnetic counterparts or galaxy catalogs. However, this relies on theoretical gravitational-wave models, which are known to be incomplete descriptions of the full predictions of general relativity. Although the accuracy of our models are improving, they are also becoming increasingly expensive as additional phenomena are incorporated. In this work, we demonstrate that there is no significant advantage in including spin-precession and higher-order multipole moments when inferring $H_0$ via the mass spectrum method for current and near-future gravitational-wave event numbers. Even when simulating a population of highly precessing and preferentially asymmetric-mass-ratio binaries, we show that the inferred $H_0$ posterior changes minimally. Using a simpler, less accurate model, achieves comparable $H_0$ estimates with six times less computational cost (on average). Using computationally cheaper models for single event inference may become crucial as thousands of gravitational-wave observations are expected to be detected in the near future.

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arXiv2026

Cosmology from Synergies Between SKAO Surveys and Gravitational Wave Observations

Both radio surveys and gravitational wave observations have the potential to probe unprecedented volumes in the Universe with systematics independent of existing cosmological probes. This gives them the potential, especially in combination, to solve some of the outstanding issues in cosmology. Here we show how the use of radio observations as electromagnetic signals tracing large scale structures can be used to provide information on gravitational wave \textit{standard sirens}. By providing a way to link luminosity distance to redshift, this combination can constrain the expansion history of the Universe, and provide information on the Hubble constant ($H_0$). We describe the utility of SKA-Mid neutral hydrogen (\hi) intensity maps, \hi\ galaxy redshift surveys, and continuum galaxy surveys compared to and in conjunction with large contemporaneous optical surveys. Such radio tracers provide a unique, large volume and high redshift information for gravitational wave source, capable of probing effectively the expansion history of the Universe $H(z)$.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2026

Radio sirens: inferring $H_0$ with binary black holes and neutral hydrogen in the era of the Einstein Telescope and the SKA Observatory

A new synergy between gravitational waves (GWs) and the study of the large-scale structure of the Universe is now emerging. Along this line of research, we combine simulated observations of stellar-origin black hole mergers and neutral hydrogen 21 cm line intensity mapping to probe the expansion rate of the Universe through the distance-redshift relation. GW signals from binary black holes provide direct distance information, while neutral hydrogen intensity maps offer a tomographic view of the large-scale structure of the Universe. Using the 3-dimensional density fields of hydrogen as a redshift prior for GW events, we explore a novel dark-sirens-like approach, here termed radio sirens, to measure the late-time expansion history of the Universe. We study the performance of the next-generation GW observatories, such as the Einstein Telescope, to ensure enough statistics and access to high-redshift data. On the other hand, future spectroscopic intensity mapping surveys with the SKA-Mid telescope are expected to trace the underlying dark matter distribution at large scales up to redshift $z\sim 3$. This combined methodology allows us to constrain the Hubble constant to $\sim 8\%$ precision, using around 3,000 GW events with signal-to-noise ratios greater than 150. This corresponds to an improvement of around $90\%$ compared to not considering the information from the neutral hydrogen maps.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2026

End-to-End Population Inference from Gravitational-Wave Strain using Transformers

The population of compact binaries encodes information about their astrophysical origins and the expansion of the universe. Hierarchical Bayesian methods infer these properties by combining single-event posteriors. As catalogs grow, however, this approach becomes computationally expensive and is subject to increasing Monte Carlo uncertainty. We introduce Dingo-Pop, a simulation-based framework that infers population posteriors directly from gravitational-wave strain data. The data for each event are embedded into low-dimensional tokens and combined using a transformer trained on simulated catalogs subject to selection effects. This enables (i) population inference without per-event Monte Carlo sampling noise, (ii) amortization across variable catalog sizes using a single network, and (iii) end-to-end inference in about one second. We train a network for catalog sizes of 25 to 1000 events, and obtain well-calibrated posteriors consistent with traditional methods. By avoiding per-event analyses that can take hours to days, Dingo-Pop enables new classes of large-scale injection studies; as an application, we examine how spectral-siren Hubble constant uncertainties change with catalog size.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Cosmic Cartography II: completing galaxy catalogs for gravitational-wave cosmology

The dark siren method exploits the complementarity between gravitational-wave binary coalescence signals and galaxy catalogs originating from the same regions of space. However, all galaxy catalogs are incomplete, i.e. they only include a subset of all galaxies, typically being biased towards the bright end of the luminosity distribution. This sub-selection systematically affects the dark siren inference of the Hubble constant $H_0$, so a completeness relation has to be introduced that accounts for the missing objects. In the literature it is standard to assume that the missing galaxies are uniformly distributed across the sky and that the galaxy magnitude distribution is known. In this work we develop a novel method which improves upon these assumptions and reconstructs the underlying true galaxy field, respecting the spatial correlation of galaxies on large scales. In our method the true magnitude distribution of galaxies is inferred alongside the spatial galaxy distribution. Our method results in an improved three-dimensional prior in redshift and sky position for the host galaxy of a GW event, which is expected to make the resulting $H_0$ posterior more robust. Building on our previous work, we make a number of improvements, and validate our method on simulated data based on the Millennium simulation. The inference results can be reproduced through our publicly available code base light.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2025

A Bright Future? Prospects for Cosmological Tests of GR with Multimessenger Gravitational Wave Events

Further bright sirens - gravitational wave events with electromagnetic counterparts - are keenly awaited, but proving elusive. The exceptional event GW170817 had a profound impact on the landscape of viable cosmological extensions of General Relativity (GR); can we expect this kind of shift to be repeated in the next decade? In this work we will assess the potential constraints from bright sirens in the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA O5 era and third generation detector era. We set up the statistical formalism for our constraints, and generate and analyse simulated data in the context of general scalar-tensor theories. We highlight the important role that gamma-ray burst detection has in breaking key parameter degeneracies. We find that the next ten bright sirens alone will not competitively constrain cosmological gravity, but that one year of third generation observations could confidently detect mild departures from GR, e.g. the Horndeski parameter $α_{\rm M}\neq 0$ is detected at greater than $3σ$. This justifies investment in a broad range of methods for gravitational wave cosmology (dark sirens, bright sirens and cross-correlation with large-scale structure) to ensure tests of cosmological gravity advance in both the short-term and the long-term.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2025

Blinded Mock Data Challenge for Gravitational-Wave Cosmology-I: Assessing the Robustness of Methods Using Binary Black Holes Mass Spectrum

Gravitational Wave (GW) sources are standard sirens that provide an independent way to map the cosmic expansion history by combining with an independent redshift measurement either from an electromagnetic counterpart for a bright siren or using different statistical techniques for dark sirens. In this analysis, we perform the first Blinded Mock Data Challenge (\texttt{Blinded-MDC}) to test the robustness in inferring the value of Hubble constant $H_0$ for a dark siren technique which depends on astrophysical mass distribution of Binary Black Holes (BBHs). We have considered different analysis setups for the \texttt{Blinded-MDC} to test both statistical and systematic uncertainties and demonstrate the capabilities in inferring $H_0$ with detector sensitivity as per the fourth observation run of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA. We find that when the astrophysical population of BBHs matches with the underlying assumption of the model, a cosmological pipeline can recover the injected parameters using the observed mass distribution. However, when the mock mass distribution of the astrophysical population depends slightly on redshift and one is ignorant about it in analyzing the data, it can cause a systematic discrepancy in the inferred value of $H_0$ by about $1.5σ$, above the statistical fluctuations due to noise and a limited number of events. In the future, elaborate studies will be required to mitigate systematic uncertainties due to unknown astrophysical complexities. This MDC framework sets the road map for inspecting the precision and accuracy of standard siren cosmology and provides the first insight into the robustness of the population-dependent cosmology inference in a blinded analysis setup.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2024

Cosmic Cartography: Bayesian reconstruction of the galaxy density informed by large-scale structure

The dark sirens method combines gravitational waves and catalogs of galaxies to constrain the cosmological expansion history, merger rates and mass distributions of compact objects, and the laws of gravity. However, the incompleteness of galaxy catalogs means faint potential host galaxies are unobserved, and must be modeled to avoid inducing a bias. The majority of dark sirens analyses to date assume that the missing galaxies are distributed uniformly across the sky, which is clearly unphysical. We introduce a new Bayesian approach to the reconstruction of galaxy catalogs, which makes full use of our knowledge of large-scale structure. Our method quantifies the uncertainties on the estimated true galaxy number count in each voxel, and is marginalized over cosmological parameters and bias parameters. Crucially, our method further assesses the (absolute) magnitude distribution of galaxies, which is not known from the galaxy catalog itself. We present the details of our method and validate our approach on a galaxy catalog associated to the Millennium Simulation. The tools developed here generate physically-informed and robust host galaxy reconstructions, enabling more informative dark sirens analyses. Stage IV galaxy surveys will display greater redshift overlap with GW observations, whilst remaining incomplete -- emphasizing the importance of our work.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2024

Gravitational wave populations and cosmology with neural posterior estimation

We apply neural posterior estimation for fast-and-accurate hierarchical Bayesian inference of gravitational wave populations. We use a normalizing flow to estimate directly the population hyper-parameters from a collection of individual source observations. This approach provides complete freedom in event representation, automatic inclusion of selection effects, and (in contrast to likelihood estimation) without the need for stochastic samplers to obtain posterior samples. Since the number of events may be unknown when the network is trained, we split into sub-population analyses that we later recombine; this allows for fast sequential analyses as additional events are observed. We demonstrate our method on a toy problem of dark siren cosmology, and show that inference takes just a few minutes and scales to $\sim 600$ events before performance degrades. We argue that neural posterior estimation therefore represents a promising avenue for population inference with large numbers of events.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2023

A novel approach to infer population and cosmological properties with gravitational waves standard sirens and galaxy surveys

Gravitational wave (GW) sources at cosmological distances can be used to probe the expansion rate of the Universe. GWs directly provide a distance estimation of the source but no direct information on its redshift. The optimal scenario to obtain a redshift is through the direct identification of an electromagnetic (EM) counterpart and its host galaxy. With almost 100 GW sources detected without EM counterparts (dark sirens), it is becoming crucial to have statistical techniques able to perform cosmological studies in the absence of EM emission. Currently, only two techniques for dark sirens are used on GW observations: the spectral siren method, which is based on the source-frame mass distribution to estimate conjointly cosmology and the source's merger rate, and the galaxy survey method, which uses galaxy surveys to assign a probabilistic redshift to the source while fitting cosmology. It has been recognized, however, that these two methods are two sides of the same coin. In this paper, we present a novel approach to unify these two methods. We apply this approach to several observed GW events using the \textsc{glade+} galaxy catalog discussing limiting cases. We provide estimates of the Hubble constant, modified gravity propagation effects, and population properties for binary black holes. We also estimate the binary black hole merger rate per galaxy to be $10^{-6}-10^{-5} {\rm yr^{-1}}$ depending on the galaxy catalog hypotheses.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2023

ICAROGW: A python package for inference of astrophysical population properties of noisy, heterogeneous and incomplete observations

We present icarogw 2.0, a pure CPU/GPU python code developed to infer astrophysical and cosmological population properties of noisy, heterogeneous, and incomplete observations. icarogw 2.0 is mainly developed for compact binary coalescence (CBC) population inference with gravitational wave (GW) observations. The code contains several models for masses, spins, and redshift of CBC distributions, and is able to infer population distributions as well as the cosmological parameters and possible general relativity deviations at cosmological scales. We present the theoretical and computational foundations of icarogw 2.0, and we describe how the code can be employed for population and cosmological inference using (i) only GWs, (ii) GWs and galaxy surveys and (iii) GWs with electromagnetic counterparts. We discuss the code performance on Graphical Processing Units (GPUs), finding a gain in computation time of about two orders of magnitudes when more than 100 GW events are involved for the analysis. We validate the code by re-analyzing GW population and cosmological studies, finding very good agreement with previous publications.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2023

Joint cosmological and gravitational-wave population inference using dark sirens and galaxy catalogues

In the absence of numerous gravitational-wave detections with confirmed electromagnetic counterparts, the "dark siren" method has emerged as a leading technique of gravitational-wave cosmology. The method allows redshift information of such events to be inferred statistically from a catalogue of potential host galaxies. Due to selection effects, dark siren analyses necessarily depend on the mass distribution of compact objects and the evolution of their merger rate with redshift. Informative priors on these quantities will impact the inferred posterior constraints on the Hubble constant ($H_0$). It is thus crucial to vary these unknown distributions during an $H_0$ inference. This was not possible in earlier analyses due to the high computational cost, restricting them to either excluding galaxy catalogue information, or fixing the gravitational-wave population mass distribution and risking introducing bias to the $H_0$ measurement. This paper introduces a significantly enhanced version of the Python package GWCOSMO, which allows joint estimation of cosmological and compact binary population parameters. This thereby ensures the analysis is now robust to a major source of potential bias. The gravitational-wave events from the Third Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogue are reanalysed with the GLADE+ galaxy catalogue, and an updated, more reliable measurement of $H_0=69^{+12}_{-7}$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$ is found (maximum a posteriori probability and 68% highest density interval). This improved method will enable cosmological analyses with future gravitational-wave detections to make full use of the information available (both from galaxy catalogues and the compact binary population itself), leading to promising new independent bounds on the Hubble constant.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2023

Transverse Doppler effect and parameter estimation of LISA three-body systems

Some binary black hole systems potentially observable in LISA could be in orbit around a supermassive black hole (SMBH). The imprint of relativistic three-body effects on the waveform of the binary can be used to estimate all the parameters of the triple system, in particular the mass of the SMBH. We determine the phase shift in the waveform due to the Doppler effect of the SMBH up to second order in velocity, which breaks a well-known exact degeneracy of the lowest-order Doppler effect between the mass of the SMBH and its inclination. We perform several parameter estimations for LISA signals including this additional dephasing in the wave, showing that one can determine accurately all parameters of the three-body system. Our results indicate that one can measure the mass of a $10^8\,$M$_{\odot}$ SMBH with an accuracy better than $\sim 30\%$ (resp. $\sim 15\%$) by monitoring the waveform of a binary system whose period around the SMBH is less 100 yr (resp. 20 yr).

gr-qc↗
arXiv2023

A window for cosmic strings

Particle emission, in addition to gravitational radiation from cosmic string loops, affects the resulting loop distribution and hence the corresponding observational consequences of cosmic strings. Here we focus on two models in which loops of length $\ell$ are produced from the infinite string network with a given power-law. For both models we find that, due to particle production, the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background (SGWB) is cut off outside the region of parameter space probed by any current or planned GW experiment. Therefore the present constraints from the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra (LVK) collaboration still hold. However for one of these models, if a fraction $\gtrsim O(10^{-3})$ of these particles cascades into $γ$-rays, and if the gravitational backreaction scale follows the Polchinski-Rocha model, then the string tension is tightly constrained from below by measurements of the Diffuse $γ$-Ray Background, and from above by the SGWB. With reasonable assumptions, the joint constraint on the string tension set by these two possible observables reduces the available parameter space of this cosmic string model to a narrow band. Future upgrades to LVK will either rule out this model or detect strings.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2022

The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy catalog approach for gravitational wave cosmology

We outline the ``dark siren'' galaxy catalog method for cosmological inference using gravitational wave (GW) standard sirens, clarifying some common misconceptions in the implementation of this method. When a confident transient electromagnetic counterpart to a GW event is unavailable, the identification of a unique host galaxy is in general challenging. Instead, as originally proposed by Schutz (1986), one can consult a galaxy catalog and implement a dark siren statistical approach incorporating all potential host galaxies within the localization volume. Trott & Hunterer 2021 recently claimed that this approach results in a biased estimate of the Hubble constant, $H_0$, when implemented on mock data, even if optimistic assumptions are made. We demonstrate explicitly that, as previously shown by multiple independent groups, the dark siren statistical method leads to an unbiased posterior when the method is applied to the data correctly. We highlight common sources of error possible to make in the generation of mock data and implementation of the statistical framework, including the mismodeling of selection effects and inconsistent implementations of the Bayesian framework, which can lead to a spurious bias.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2022

Current and future constraints on cosmology and modified gravitational wave friction from binary black holes

Gravitational wave (GW) standard sirens are well-established probes with which one can measure cosmological parameters, and are complementary to other probes like the cosmic microwave background or supernovae standard candles. Here we focus on dark GW sirens, specifically binary black holes (BBHs) for which there is only GW data. Our approach relies on the assumption of a source frame mass model for the BBH distribution, and we consider four models that are representative of the BBH population observed so far. In addition to inferring cosmological and mass model parameters, we use dark sirens to test modified gravity theories. These theories often predict different GW propagation equations on cosmological scales, leading to a different GW luminosity distance which in some cases can be parametrized by variables $Ξ_0$ and $n$. General relativity (GR) corresponds to $Ξ_0= 1$. We perform a joint estimate of the population parameters governing mass, redshift, the variables characterizing the cosmology, and the modified GW luminosity distance. We use data from the third LVK observation run and find - for the four mass models and for three SNR cuts - that GR is consistently the preferred model to describe all observed BBH GW signals. Furthermore, all modified gravity parameters have posteriors that are compatible with the values predicted by GR at the 90% confidence interval. We show that there are strong correlations between cosmological, astrophysical and modified gravity parameters. If GR is the correct theory of gravity, and assuming narrow priors on the cosmological parameters, we forecast an uncertainty of the modified gravity parameter $Ξ_0$ of 51% with $\sim 90$ detections at O4-like sensitivities, and $Ξ_0$ of 20% with an additional $\sim 400$ detections at O5-like sensitivity. We also consider how these forecasts depend on the current uncertainties of the BBH population.

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