Targeted searches
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Cosmology
The Hubble constant is one of the most important cosmological parameters describing the expansion rate of the universe. Its accurate measurement is crucial to give constraints on cosmological models. However, as the uncertainties of the measurements shrank in the last decade it became apparent that there is a statistically significant tension between Hubble constant values measured using different methods.
Gravitational waves (GWs) provide a new, independent method to measure the Hubble constant. The GW signal from a compact binary coalescence yields a distance estimate and a galaxy catalogue provides redshift information about the possible host galaxies, which together determine the Hubble constant. Working in the Cosmology working group of the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA Collaboration, researchers of the Ghent Gravity Group play a key role in the development and application of the new method.
We led the development of the GLADE+ galaxy catalogue, one of the largest publicly available all-sky galaxy catalogues, which is used for the cosmological inference of the Hubble constant. Besides that, an earlier version of the catalogue, GLADE has been used by several teams to look for electromagnetic counterparts of GW detections. It also played a significant role in the multimessenger observation of the binary neutron star merger, GW170817, as most of the independent discoverers of the GW’s electromagnetic counterpart used the GLADE catalogue to optimize their efforts.
Past research