On the Use of Galaxy Catalogs in Gravitational-wave Parameter Estimation

A major challenge in gravitational-wave (GW) multimessenger astrophysics is the imprecise localization of GW 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 GW even...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Geoffrey Mo, Carl-Johan Haster, Erik Katsavounidis
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2025-01-01
Series:The Astrophysical Journal
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad9f36
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A major challenge in gravitational-wave (GW) multimessenger astrophysics is the imprecise localization of GW 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 GW 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 GW localization. Future investigations into sampling methods may yield improvements that increase the viability of this method.
ISSN:1538-4357