Comparing the Detectability of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation through Gravitational-Wave Autocorrelation and Cross-Correlation with Galaxies
Abstract
The amplitude and waveform shape of gravitational wave radiation from compact binary mergers enable a direct measurement of the luminosity distance to these events, making them \textit{``standard sirens''}. Binary black hole (BBH) mergers form a significant fraction of these standard sirens. A substantial catalog of BBH merger events can be used to probe cosmology and large-scale structure properties, such as the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). In this work, we explore detecting the BAO scale using the cross-correlation between BBH mergers and a galaxy catalog, and compare it with the BBH autocorrelation for the third-generation detector observations. Over a $10$-year observation period, these observatories will localize approximately 1.5×105 events within $10$ square degrees, with \snr ≥ 50 and luminosity distance uncertainty ≤ 50 Mpc, and will allow recovery of the BAO scale. We find that the BAO scale is recovered with approximately two times the \snr and a significantly better precision through cross-correlation as compared to autocorrelation.
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BibTeX
@misc{bhuyan2026comparing,
title = {{Comparing the Detectability of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation through Gravitational-Wave Autocorrelation and Cross-Correlation with Galaxies}},
author = {Gautam Bhuyan and Tathagata Ghosh and Surhud More},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.20976},
eprint = {2609.20976},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20976},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Comparing the Detectability of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation through Gravitational-Wave Autocorrelation and Cross-Correlation with Galaxies
AU - Gautam Bhuyan
AU - Tathagata Ghosh
AU - Surhud More
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/17
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.20976
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20976
AB - The amplitude and waveform shape of gravitational wave radiation from compact binary mergers enable a direct measurement of the luminosity distance to these events, making them \textit{``standard sirens''}. Binary black hole (BBH) mergers form a significant fraction of these standard sirens. A substantial catalog of BBH merger events can be used to probe cosmology and large-scale structure properties, such as the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). In this work, we explore detecting the BAO scale using the cross-correlation between BBH mergers and a galaxy catalog, and compare it with the BBH autocorrelation for the third-generation detector observations. Over a $10$-year observation period, these observatories will localize approximately 1.5×10^5 events within $10$ square degrees, with \snr ≥ 50 and luminosity distance uncertainty ≤ 50 Mpc, and will allow recovery of the BAO scale. We find that the BAO scale is recovered with approximately two times the \snr and a significantly better precision through cross-correlation as compared to autocorrelation.
ER -