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Search for Lensed Gravitational Waves Including Morse Phase Information: An Intriguing Candidate in O2

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arxiv 2007.12709 v1 pith:6RRB73VZ submitted 2020-07-24 astro-ph.HE astro-ph.COgr-qc

Liang Dai , Barak Zackay , Tejaswi Venumadhav , Javier Roulet , Matias Zaldarriaga This is my paper · ORCID
classification astro-ph.HEastro-ph.COgr-qc
keywords lensedimageslenssourceeventsmorsephasesearch
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abstract

We search for strongly lensed and multiply imaged gravitational wave signals in the second observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (O2). We exploit a new source of information, the so-called Morse phase, which further mitigates the search background and constrains viable lenses. The best candidate we find is consistent with a strongly lensed signal from a massive binary black hole (BBH) merger, with three detected images consisting of the previously catalogued events GW170104 and GW170814, and a subthreshold trigger, GWC170620. Given the number of BBH events detected so far, we estimate an overall false alarm probability $\sim 10^{-4}$ for the observed high degree of parameter coincidence between the three events. On the flip side, we measure the Morse phase differences which suggest a complex and atypical lens system, with at least five images including a magnified image at a local maximum of the Fermat potential. The low prior probability for multiple lensed images and the amount of fine tuning required in the lens model reduce the credibility of the lensing hypothesis. The long time delays between lensed images point toward a galaxy cluster lens with an internal velocity dispersion $\sigma \sim 650\,{\rm km/s}$, and the observed strain amplitudes imply a likely range $0.4 < z \lesssim 0.7$ for the source redshift. We provide an error ellipse of $\sim 16\,{\rm deg}^2$ for the sky location of the source together with additional specific constraints on the lens-host system, and encourage follow-up efforts to confirm or rule out any viable lens. If this is indeed a lensed event, successfully pinpointing the system would offer a unique opportunity to identify the host galaxy of a BBH merger, and even localize the source within it.

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Cited by 7 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. The diffraction-lensing interpretation of GW231123 with astrophysical priors

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    GW231123 is better fit by a lower-mass merger diffracted by an isolated ~1000 M_sun lens, but astrophysical priors and a frequentist rate estimate make this lensing interpretation unlikely.

  2. Search for strong lensing of gravitational waves in the binary black hole events from O1-O4a

    gr-qc 2026-07 accept novelty 6.0 of 10

    Posterior Overlap 2.0 finds no lensed BBH pairs in O1–O4a (p_L < 0.6% for all pairs) and sets a 90% upper bound of 1.4% on the strong-lensing fraction.

  3. Across the Universe: GW231123 as a magnified and diffracted black hole merger

    astro-ph.GA 2025-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    GW231123's extreme mass and spins may be explained by a point-mass microlens embedded in a galaxy, reducing the inferred source mass to about 100-180 solar masses.

  4. Can Eccentric Binary Black Hole Signals Mimic Gravitational-Wave Microlensing?

    gr-qc 2025-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Eccentric BBH signals can masquerade as wave-optics microlensing in quasicircular analyses, but eccentric recovery templates break the degeneracy.

  5. The Proper Motion of Strongly Lensed Binary Neutron Star Mergers in LIGO/Virgo/Kagra can be Constrained by Measuring Doppler Induced Gravitational Wave Dephasing

    astro-ph.CO 2025-02 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Doppler dephasing between the two images of a strongly lensed neutron-star merger could be detectable at LIGO A+ and A# sensitivity for relative transverse velocities of roughly 1,800 to 2,000 km/s.

  6. Self-lensing of moving gravitational-wave sources can break the microlensing crossing timescale degeneracy

    astro-ph.HE 2025-12 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Self-lensing of a moving GW chirp by an orbiting black hole yields a curve width and interference beats that together give the orbital distance and the black hole mass.

  7. Machine Learning Assisted Parameter-Space Searches for Lensed Gravitational Waves

    gr-qc 2025-09 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Normalizing flow based non-Gaussian consistency tests in a compressed detector basis select GW170104-GW170814 as the only promising lensed pair in GWTC-3.

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