# Cosmological perturbation effects on gravitational-wave luminosity distance estimates

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how cosmological perturbations affect gravitational-wave luminosity distance estimates, revealing that these effects are negligible now but crucial for future high-precision gravitational-wave observatories.

## Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive calculation of perturbation-induced corrections to gravitational-wave luminosity distances, extending standard models that assume a perfectly homogeneous universe.

## Key findings

- Corrections are negligible for current detectors.
- Perturbation effects are mildly important for DECIGO.
- Effects are very significant for future detectors like the Big Bang Observer.

## Abstract

Waveforms of gravitational waves provide information about a variety of parameters for the binary system merging. However, standard calculations have been performed assuming a FLRW universe with no perturbations. In reality this assumption should be dropped: we show that the inclusion of cosmological perturbations translates into corrections to the estimate of astrophysical parameters derived for the merging binary systems. We compute corrections to the estimate of the luminosity distance due to velocity, volume, lensing and gravitational potential effects. Our results show that the amplitude of the corrections will be negligible for current instruments, mildly important for experiments like the planned DECIGO, and very important for future ones such as the Big Bang Observer.