A measurement of the history of cosmic star formation is central to
understand the origin and evolution of galaxies. The measurement is extremely
challenging using electromagnetic radiation: significant modeling is required
to convert luminosity to mass, and to properly account for dust attenuation,
for example. Here we show how detections of gravitational waves from
inspiraling binary black holes made by proposed third-generation detectors can
be used to measure the star formation rate of massive stars with high precision
up to redshifts of ~10. Depending on the time-delay model, the predicted
detection rates ranges from ~1400 to ~16000 per month with the current
measurement of local merger rate density. With three months of observations,
parameters describing the volumetric star formation rate can be constrained at
the few percent level, and the volumetric merger rate can be directly measured
to 3% at z~2. Given a parameterized star formation rate, the characteristic
delay time between binary formation and merger can be measured to ~60%.Comment: 7 pages, 1 table, 4 fig
