Gravitational-wave constraints on the cosmic opacity at $z\sim 5$: forecast from space gravitational-wave antenna DECIGO

TL;DR

This paper forecasts how future space-based gravitational wave observations from DECIGO can precisely measure cosmic opacity at high redshifts up to z~5, improving understanding of universe transparency without assuming specific models.

Contribution

It demonstrates that DECIGO combined with electromagnetic probes can constrain cosmic opacity at high redshifts with high precision, emphasizing model-independent testing methods.

Findings

Cosmic opacity can be constrained to Δε~10^{-2} at z~5.

Quasar data improves the precision of opacity measurements.

Non-zero optical depth is statistically significant in specific redshift ranges.

Abstract

Since gravitational waves (GWs) propagate freely through a perfect fluid, coalescing compact binary systems as standard sirens allow to measure the luminosity distance directly and provide distance measurements unaffected by the cosmic opacity. DECi-hertz Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (DECIGO) is a future Japanese space gravitational-wave antenna sensitive to frequency range between target frequencies of LISA and ground-based detectors. Combining the predicted future GW observations from DECIGO and three current popular astrophysical probes (HII regions, SNe Ia Pantheon sample, quasar sample) in electromagnetic (EM) domains, one would be able to probe the opacity of the Universe at different redshifts. In this paper, we show that the cosmic opacity parameter can be constrained to a high precision ($\Delta \epsilon\sim 10^{-2}$) out to high redshifts ($z\sim$5). In order to reconstruct the evolution of cosmic opacity without assuming any particular functional form of it, the cosmic opacity tests should be applied to individual redshift bins independently. Therefore, we also calculate the optical depth at individual redshifts and averaged $\tau(z)$ within redshift bins. Our findings indicate that, compared with the results obtained from the HII galaxies and Pantheon SNe Ia, there is an improvement in precision when the quasar sample is considered. While non-zero optical depth is statistically significant only for redshift ranges $0<z<0.5$, $1<z<2$, and $2.5<z<3.5$, such tendency is different from that obtained in the framework of its parametrized form. Therefore the importance of cosmic-opacity test without a prescribed phenomenological function should be emphasized.