Gravitational Wave Opacity from Gauge Field Dark Energy

TL;DR

This paper explores how cosmic gauge field dark energy can cause gravitational waves to experience an anomalous redshift-dependent opacity, affecting cosmological measurements and potentially detectable by future gravitational wave observatories.

Contribution

It introduces a model where gauge field dark energy causes gravitational wave opacity and constrains this scenario using multiple cosmological observations.

Findings

Gravitational waves can be dimmed by up to 1% due to gauge field dark energy effects.

The model behaves like dark radiation in early times and drives acceleration later.

Third-generation detectors could detect the predicted dimming effects.

Abstract

We show that astrophysical gravitational waves can undergo an anomalous modulation when propagating through cosmic gauge field dark energy. A sufficiently strong effect, dependent on the gauge field energy density, would appear as a redshift-dependent opacity, thereby impacting the use of gravitational wave standard sirens to constrain the expansion history of the Universe. We investigate a particular model of cosmic gauge field dark energy and show that at early times it behaves like dark radiation, whereas a novel interaction causes it to drive cosmic acceleration at late times. Joint constraints on the cosmological scenario due to type 1a supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations, and cosmic microwave background data are presented. In view of these constraints, we show that standard siren luminosity distances in the redshift range 0.5 < z < 1.5 would systematically dim by up to 1%, which may be distinguishable by third-generation gravitational wave detectors.