ABSTRACT

The observation of binary neutron star merger GW170817 provides the first constraint on the Hubble constant $H_0$ using counterpart standard siren method. For the case where a counterpart is not identified, a statistical standard siren method with a galaxy catalog can be exploited to estimate $H_0$. In this colloquium I will talk about the Bayesian framework that LIGO-Virgo Collaboration's Cosmology group have developed to estimate the Hubble constant using both the counterpart and the statistical standard siren methods. I will also show the application of the framework to a series of mock data challenges from O2-like detection simulation of 249 binary neutron star mergers with focuses on gravitational wave selection and electromagnetic selection effects.

BIO
Dr. Hong Qi is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Cardiff University in UK. She obtained her PhD with Prof. Patrick Brady at University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee in US in 2018. She has been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) since 2015 and is part of the LSC Parameter Estimation group and Cosmology group. She has also been a Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) consortium member since 2018.