113 research outputs found
Precision of Hubble constant derived using black hole binary absolute distances and statistical redshift information
Measured gravitational waveforms from black hole binary inspiral events
directly determine absolute luminosity distances. To use these data for
cosmology, it is necessary to independently obtain redshifts for the events,
which may be difficult for those without electromagnetic counterparts. Here it
is demonstrated that certainly in principle, and possibly in practice,
clustering of galaxies allows extraction of the redshift information from a
sample statistically for the purpose of estimating mean cosmological
parameters, without identification of host galaxies for individual events. We
extract mock galaxy samples from the 6th Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey resembling those that would be associated with inspiral events of
stellar mass black holes falling into massive black holes at redshift z ~ 0.1
to 0.5. A simple statistical procedure is described to estimate a likelihood
function for the Hubble constant H_0: each galaxy in a LISA error volume
contributes linearly to the log likelihood for the source redshift, and the log
likelihood for each source contributes linearly to that of H_0. This procedure
is shown to provide an accurate and unbiased estimator of H_0. It is estimated
that a precision better than one percent in H_0 may be possible if the rate of
such events is sufficiently high, on the order of 20 to z = 0.5.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. D; new references adde
SDSSJ14584479+3720215: A Benchmark JHK Blazar Light Curve from the 2MASS Calibration Scans
Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are well-known to exhibit flux variability
across a wide range of wavelength regimes, but the precise origin of the
variability at different wavelengths remains unclear. To investigate the
relatively unexplored near-IR variability of the most luminous AGNs, we conduct
a search for variability using well sampled JHKs-band light curves from the
2MASS survey calibration fields. Our sample includes 27 known quasars with an
average of 924 epochs of observation over three years, as well as one
spectroscopically confirmed blazar (SDSSJ14584479+3720215) with 1972 epochs of
data. This is the best-sampled NIR photometric blazar light curve to date, and
it exhibits correlated, stochastic variability that we characterize with
continuous auto-regressive moving average (CARMA) models. None of the other 26
known quasars had detectable variability in the 2MASS bands above the
photometric uncertainty. A blind search of the 2MASS calibration field light
curves for AGN candidates based on fitting CARMA(1,0) models (damped-random
walk) uncovered only 7 candidates. All 7 were young stellar objects within the
{\rho} Ophiuchus star forming region, five with previous X-ray detections. A
significant {\gamma}-ray detection (5{\sigma}) for the known blazar using 4.5
years of Fermi photon data is also found. We suggest that strong NIR
variability of blazars, such as seen for SDSSJ14584479+3720215, can be used as
an efficient method of identifying previously-unidentified {\gamma}-ray
blazars, with low contamination from other AGN.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, ApJ Accepte
Solving the puzzle of discrepant quasar variability on monthly time-scales implied by SDSS and CRTS data sets
We present an improved photometric error analysis for the 7 100 CRTS (Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey) optical light curves for quasars from the SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) Stripe 82 catalogue. The SDSS imaging survey has provided a time-resolved photometric data set, which greatly improved our understanding of the quasar optical continuum variability: Data for monthly and longer time-scales are consistent with a damped random walk (DRW). Recently, newer data obtained by CRTS provided puzzling evidence for enhanced variability, compared to SDSS results, on monthly time-scales. Quantitatively, SDSS results predict about 0.06 mag root-mean-square (rms) variability for monthly time-scales, while CRTS data show about a factor of 2 larger rms, for spectroscopically confirmed SDSS quasars. Our analysis has successfully resolved this discrepancy as due to slightly underestimated photometric uncertainties from the CRTS image processing pipelines. As a result, the correction for observational noise is too small and the implied quasar variability is too large. The CRTS photometric error correction factors, derived from detailed analysis of non-variable SDSS standard stars that were re-observed by CRTS, are about 20–30 per cent, and result in reconciling quasar variability behaviour implied by the CRTS data with earlier SDSS results. An additional analysis based on independent light curve data for the same objects obtained by the Palomar Transient Factory provides further support for this conclusion. In summary, the quasar variability constraints on weekly and monthly time-scales from SDSS, CRTS and PTF surveys are mutually compatible, as well as consistent with DRW model
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