Beyond Concordance Cosmology with Magnification of Gravitational-Wave Standard Sirens

Abstract

We show how future gravitational-wave detectors would be able of discriminating between the concordance LCDM cosmological model and up-to-date competing alternatives, e.g. dynamical dark energy models (DE) or modified gravity theories (MG). Our method consists in using the weak-lensing magnification effect that affects a standard-siren signal because of its travelling trough the Universe's large-scale structure. As a demonstration, we present constraints on DE and MG from proposed gravitational-wave detectors, namely ET and DECIGO/BBO.

5 pages, 2 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters