Measuring the Hubble constant using gravitational waves

Second-generation ground-based laser interferometers are expected to deliver a wealth of gravitational waves (GW) events from coalescing compact binaries up to a redshift of about 0.3. Being free of the systematics affecting electromagnetic measurements, GW offer the possibility of an independent measurement of H-0. This paper presents a method based on Bayesian inference aimed at estimating the value of the cosmological parameters for any GW event. In contrast to earlier work, this framework does not require the precise identification of the putative optical counterpart, but it considers all the potential galaxy hosts consistent with the recovered sky position and distance posterior distributions. When applied to the upcoming network of second generation interferometers, 50 GW events will yield a measurement of H-0 with an uncertainty of a few per cents.