An 8 per cent determination of the Hubble constant from localized fast radio bursts

• Published in: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Letters Vol. 515; no. 1; pp. L1 - L5
• Main Authors: Wu, Qin, Zhang, Guo-Qiang, Wang, Fa-Yin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 01-09-2022
• Subjects: fast radio bursts; cosmological parameters
• ISSN: 1745-3925; 1745-3933
• DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slac022

ABSTRACT
The cosmological-constant (Λ) cold dark matter (CDM) model is challenged by the Hubble tension, a remarkable difference of Hubble constant H0 between measurements from local probes and the prediction from Planck cosmic microwave background observations under ΛCDM model. So one urgently needs new distance indicators to test the Hubble tension. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration pulses occurring at cosmological distances, which are attractive cosmological probes. Here, we report a measurement of ${H_0} = 68.81^{+4.99}_{-4.33} {\rm \ km \ s^{-1} \ Mpc^{-1}}$ using eighteen localized FRBs, with an uncertainty of 8 per cent at 68.3 per cent confidence. Using a simulation of 100 localized FRBs, we find that error of H0 can be reduced to 2.6 per cent at 1σ uncertainty. Thanks to the high event rate of FRBs and localization capability of radio telescopes (i.e. Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and Very Large Array), future observations of a reasonably sized sample will provide a new way of measuring H0 with a high precision to test the Hubble tension.