Measuring the star formation rate with gravitational waves from binary black holes

Salvatore Vitale, Will M. Farr

Published 2018-08-01Version 1

A measurement of the history of cosmic star formation is central to understand the origin and evolution of galaxies. The measurement is extremely challenging using electromagnetic radiation: significant modeling is required to convert luminosity to mass, and to properly account for dust attenuation, for example. Here we show how detections of gravitational waves from inspiraling binary black holes made by proposed third-generation detectors can be used to measure the star formation rate of massive stars with high precision up to redshifts of \si 10. Predicted detection rates are $\sim 15,000$ mergers per month. With one month of observations, parameters describing the volumetric star formation rate can be constrained at the few percent level, and the volumetric merger rate can be directly measured to 3\% at $z\sim 2$. Given a parameterized star formation rate, the characteristic delay time between binary formation and merger can be measured to $\sim 30\%$.