Constraints on Compact Dark Matter from Gravitational Wave Microlensing

S. Basak, A. Ganguly, K. Haris, S. Kapadia, A. K. Mehta, P. Ajith

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

If a significant fraction of dark matter is in the form of compact objects, they will cause microlensing effects in the gravitational wave signals observable by LIGO and Virgo. From the nonobservation of microlensing signatures in the binary black hole events from the first two observing runs and the first half of the third observing run, we constrain the fraction of compact dark matter in the mass range 102-105 M to be less than ≃50%-80% (details depend on the assumed source population properties and the Bayesian priors). These modest constraints will be significantly improved in the next few years with the expected detection of thousands of binary black hole events, providing a new avenue to probe the nature of dark matter.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberL28
Pages (from-to)1-9
JournalAstrophysical Journal Letters
Volume926
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Feb 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We are grateful to Anupreeta More and the anonymous referees for their careful review of the manuscript. We also thank Aditya Vijaykumar and the members of the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA Collaboration’s lensing subgroup for useful discussions. Our research was supported by the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, under Project No. RTI4001. S.J.K.'s research was funded by the Simons Foundation through a Targeted Grant to the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (ICTS-TIFR). P.A.’s research was funded by the Max Planck Society through a Max Planck Partner Group at ICTS-TIFR and by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research through the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars program. The numerical calculations reported in the paper were performed on the Alice computing cluster at ICTS-TIFR and the Sarathi cluster at IUCAA.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.

Funding

We are grateful to Anupreeta More and the anonymous referees for their careful review of the manuscript. We also thank Aditya Vijaykumar and the members of the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA Collaboration’s lensing subgroup for useful discussions. Our research was supported by the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, under Project No. RTI4001. S.J.K.'s research was funded by the Simons Foundation through a Targeted Grant to the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (ICTS-TIFR). P.A.’s research was funded by the Max Planck Society through a Max Planck Partner Group at ICTS-TIFR and by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research through the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars program. The numerical calculations reported in the paper were performed on the Alice computing cluster at ICTS-TIFR and the Sarathi cluster at IUCAA.

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