Effect of Redshift Distributions of Fast Radio Bursts on Cosmological Constraints

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different assumed redshift distributions of fast radio bursts (FRBs) impact their effectiveness in constraining cosmological parameters, highlighting the need to determine the true redshift distribution for accurate cosmological studies.

Contribution

It analyzes the influence of various redshift distributions on cosmological constraints derived from simulated FRBs, emphasizing the importance of identifying the actual distribution.

Findings

Different redshift distributions yield varying cosmological constraints.

Assumed distributions can bias the results of FRB-based cosmological studies.

Highlighting the necessity to determine the true redshift distribution of FRBs.

Abstract

Nowadays, fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been a promising probe for astronomy and cosmology. However, it is not easy to identify the redshifts of FRBs to date. Thus, no sufficient actual FRBs with identified redshifts can be used to study cosmology currently. In the past years, one has to use the simulated FRBs with "known" redshifts instead. To simulate an FRB, one should randomly assign a redshift to it from a given redshift distribution. But the actual redshift distribution of FRBs is still unknown so far. Therefore, many redshift distributions have been assumed in the literature. In the present work, we study the effect of various redshift distributions on cosmological constraints, while they are treated equally. We find that different redshift distributions lead to different cosmological constraining abilities from the simulated FRBs. This result emphasizes the importance to find the actual redshift distribution of FRBs, and reminds us of the possible bias in the FRB simulations due to the redshift distributions.