The prospects of using gravitational waves for constraining the anisotropy of the Universe *

Abstract

Abstract The observation of GW150914 gave a new independent measurement of the luminosity distance of a gravitational wave event. In this paper, we constrain the anisotropy of the Universe by using gravitational wave events. We simulate hundreds of events of binary neutron star merger that may be observed by the Einstein Telescope. Full simulation of the production process of gravitational wave data is employed. We find that 200 binary neutron star merging events with the redshift in (0,1) observed by the Einstein Telescope may constrain the anisotropy with an accuracy comparable to that from the Union2.1 supernovae. This result shows that gravitational waves can be a powerful tool for investigating cosmological anisotropy.