We present a test of the statistical method introduced by Bernard F. Shutz in 1986 using only gravitational waves to infer the Hubble constant ($\text{ H}_0$) from GW190814, the first high-probability neutron-star--black-hole (NS-BH) merger candidate detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo interferometer. We apply a baseline test of this method to the binary neutron star (BNS) merger GW170817 and find $\text{ H}_0 = 70^{ +35.0}_{ -18.0}$km s$^{ -1}$ Mpc$^{ -1}$ (maximum { \it a posteriori} and 68.3\% highest density posterior interval) for a galaxy $B$-band luminosity threshold of $L_B \geq 0.001 L_B^*$ with a correction for catalog incompleteness. Repeating the calculation for GW190814, we obtain $\text{ H}_0 = 67^{ +41.0}_{ -26.0}$ km s$^{ -1}$ Mpc$^{ -1}$ and $\text{ H}_0 = 71^{ +34.0}_{ -30.0}$ km s$^{ -1}$ Mpc$^{ -1}$ for $L_B \geq 0.001 L_B^*$ and $L_B \geq 0.626 L_B^*$, respectively. Combining the posteriors for both events yields $\text{ H}_0 = 70^{ +29.0}_{ -18.0}$ km s$^{ -1}$ Mpc$^{ -1}$, demonstrating the improvement on constraints when using multiple gravitational-wave events. We also confirm the results of other works that adopt this method, showing that increasing the $L_B$ threshold enhances the posterior structure and slightly shifts the distribution's peak to higher $\text{ H}_0$ values. We repeat the joint inference using the low-spin PhenomPNRT (Abbott et al. 2019a) and the newly available combined (SEOBNRv4PHM + IMRPhenomPv3HM; Abbott et al. 2020) posterior samples for GW170817 and GW190814, respectively, achieving a tighter constraint of $\text{ H}_0 = 69^{ +29.0}_{ -14.0}$ km s$^{ -1}$ Mpc$^{ -1}$.
Categories: astro-ph.CO