Constraints on primordial-black-hole population and cosmic expansion history from GWTC-3

Abstract

Gravitational waves (GWs) from compact binary coalescences provide an independent probe of the cosmic expansion history other than electromagnetic waves. In this work, we assume the binary black holes (BBHs) detected by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaborations are of primordial origin and constrain the population parameters of primordial black holes (PBHs) and Hubble parameter H(z) using 42 BBHs from third LVK GW transient catalog (GWTC-3). Three PBH mass models are considered: lognormal, power-law, and critical collapse PBH mass functions. By performing a hierarchical Bayesian population analysis, the Bayes factor strongly disfavors the power-law PBH mass function against the other two in GWTC-3. The constraints on standard Λ CDM cosmological parameters are rather weak and in agreement with current results. When combining the multi-messenger standard siren measurement from GW170817, the Hubble constant H 0 is constrained to be 69-8+19 km s-1 Mpc-1 and 70-8+26 km s-1 Mpc-1 at 68% confidence for the lognormal and critical collapse mass models, respectively. Furthermore, we consider a mixed ABH+PBH model, in which we assume LVK BBHs can come from both the astrophysical black hole (ABH) and PBH channels. We find that the ABH+PBH model can better describe the mass distribution in GWTC-3 than any single ABH or PBH model, thus improving the precision to constrain the Hubble constant. With the increased BBH events, the mixed ABH+PBH model provides a robust statistical inference for both the population and cosmological parameters.