Systematic Uncertainty of Standard Sirens from the Viewing Angle of Binary Neutron Star Inspirals

The independent measurement of the Hubble constant with gravitational-wave standard sirens will potentially shed light on the tension between the local distance ladders and Planck experiments. Therefore, thorough understanding of the sources of systematic uncertainty for the standard siren method is crucial. In this Letter, we focus on two scenarios that will potentially dominate the systematic uncertainty of standard sirens. First, simulations of electromagnetic counterparts of binary neutron star mergers suggest aspherical emissions, so the binaries available for the standard siren method can be selected by their viewing angles. This selection effect can lead to ≳2% bias in Hubble constant measurement even with mild selection. Second, if the binary viewing angles are constrained by the electromagnetic counterpart observations but the bias of the constraints is not controlled under ∼10°, the resulting systematic uncertainty in the Hubble constant will be >3%. In addition, we find that both of the systematics cannot be properly removed by the viewing angle measurement from gravitational-wave observations. Comparing to the known dominant systematic uncertainty for standard sirens, the ≤2% gravitational-wave calibration uncertainty, the effects from the viewing angle appear to be more significant. Therefore, the systematic uncertainty from the viewing angle might be a major challenge before the standard sirens can resolve the tension in the Hubble constant, which is currently ∼9%.