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Gravitational wave lensing as a probe of halo properties and dark matter

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arxiv 2212.11960 v3 pith:HJSASCDC submitted 2022-12-22 astro-ph.CO gr-qchep-ph

classification astro-ph.COgr-qchep-ph
keywords centralmattergravitationaldarklenscoredistinctfeatures
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abstract

Just like light, gravitational waves (GWs) are deflected and magnified by gravitational fields as they propagate through the Universe. However, their low frequency, phase coherence and feeble coupling to matter allow for distinct lensing phenomena, such as diffraction and central images, that are challenging to observe through electromagnetic sources. Here we explore how these phenomena can be used to probe features of gravitational lenses. We focus on two variants of the singular isothermal sphere, with 1) a variable slope of the matter density and 2) a central core. We describe the imprints of these features in the wave- and geometric-optics regimes, including the prospect of detecting central images. We forecast the capacity of LISA and advanced LIGO to study strongly lensed signals and measure the projected lens mass, impact parameter and slope or core size. A broad range of lens masses allows all parameters to be measured with precision up to $\sim 1/{\rm SNR}$, despite large degeneracies. Thanks to wave-optics corrections, all parameters can be measured, even when no central image forms. Although GWs are sensitive to projected quantities, we compute the probability distribution of lens redshift, virial mass and projection scale given a cosmology. As an application, we consider the prospect of constraining self-interacting and ultra-light dark matter, showing the regions of parameter space accessible to strongly-lensed GWs. The distinct GW signatures will enable novel probes of fundamental physics and astrophysics, including the properties of dark matter and the central regions of galactic halos.

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Cited by 8 Pith papers

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

  1. Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves: universal characteristics of strongly lensed memory waveforms

    gr-qc 2025-10 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Strongly lensed gravitational-wave memory waveforms acquire universal parity signatures—odd for type I/III images, even for type II—that can identify image type via a simple step-function approximation.

  2. Probing Dark Matter Substructure with Wave-Optics Distortions of Strongly Lensed LISA Gravitational Waves

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

    Simulated four-year-LISA lensed waveforms show fuzzy-dark-matter substructure leaves a frequency-dependent phase residual that distinguishes it from NFW or self-interacting halos with ~60–110 resolved images.

  3. 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.

  4. Identifying lensed gravitational waves with physics-informed posterior learning

    gr-qc 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Fusing a simulation-trained common-source mass posterior with waveform features raises lensed-event detection efficiency from 20.8% to 35.2% at 1% false-positive rate and lowers the SNR for 50% efficiency from 45.3 to 33.5.

  5. 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.

  6. Discovering gravitational waveform distortions from lensing: A deep dive into GW231123

    gr-qc 2025-12 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    GW231123's apparent gravitational-lensing signal has a false-alarm probability around 4σ, so the event cannot be claimed as lensed under the two-image wave-optics model.

  7. Accelerated inference of microlensed gravitational waves with machine learning

    astro-ph.CO 2025-11 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A neural posterior estimator trained on wave-optics-microlensed gravitational-wave signals recovers source and lens parameters and Bayes factors consistent with Bilby, about 10 times faster.

  8. Multi-band observation of lensed gravitational waves as a probe of small-mass dark matter halos

    astro-ph.CO 2025-06 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Using Fisher forecasts, the paper shows that joint ET and DECIGO observations of one lensed gravitational wave can break the degeneracy between lens mass, impact parameter, and halo core size.

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