First cosmological constraints combining Planck with the recent gravitational-wave standard siren measurement of the Hubble constant

Abstract

The recent observations of gravitational-wave and electromagnetic emission produced by the merger of the binary neutron-star system GW170817 have opened the possibility of using standard sirens to constrain the value of the Hubble constant. While the reported bound of H₀=7 0_-8⁺¹² at 68% C.L. is significantly weaker than those recently derived by observations of Cepheid variables, it does not require any form of cosmic distance ladder and can be considered as complementary and, in principle, more conservative. Here we combine, for the first time, the new measurement with the Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations in a 12 parameter extended Λ CDM scenario, where the Hubble constant is weakly constrained from CMB data alone and bound to a low value H₀=5 5_-20⁺⁷ km /s /Mpc at 68% C.L. We point out that the non-Gaussian shape of the GW170817 bound makes lower values of the Hubble constant in worse agreement with observations than what is expected from a Gaussian form. The inclusion of the new GW170817 Hubble constant measurement therefore significantly reduces the allowed parameter space, improving the cosmological bounds on several parameters as the neutrino mass, curvature, and dark energy equation of state.