Velocity debiasing for Hubble constant measurements from standard sirens

Abstract

Gravitational wave (GW) sources are an excellent probe of the luminosity distance and offer a novel measure of the Hubble constant, \(H_0\). This estimation of \(H_0\) from standard sirens requires an accurate estimation of the cosmological redshift of the host galaxy of the GW source, after correcting for its peculiar velocity. Absence of an accurate peculiar velocity correction affects both the precision and accuracy of the measurement of \(H_0\), particularly for nearby sources. We propose a framework to incorporate such a peculiar velocity correction for GW sources. The implementation of our method to the event GW170817 combined with the Very Large Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observation leads to a revised value of \(H_0= 69.3^{+ 4.5}_{-4.0}\) km s\(^{-1}\)Mpc\(^{-1}\); more importantly, it demonstrates that our method will allow to achieve in practice unbiased, accurate measurements of \(H_0\) at the precision promised by standard siren forecasts.