Stellar-mass microlensing of gravitational waves

Mark H.Y. Cheung; Joseph Gais; Otto A. Hannuksela; Tjonnie G.F. Li

doi:10.1093/mnras/stab579

Stellar-mass microlensing of gravitational waves

Mark H.Y. Cheung^*, Joseph Gais, Otto A. Hannuksela, Tjonnie G.F. Li

^*Corresponding author for this work

Subatomic Physics

Chinese University of Hong Kong

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

When gravitational waves (GWs) pass through the nuclear star clusters of galactic lenses, they may be microlensed by the stars. Such microlensing can cause potentially observable beating patterns on the waveform due to waveform superposition and magnify the signal. On the one hand, the beating patterns and magnification could lead to the first detection of a microlensed GW. On the other hand, microlensing introduces a systematic error in strong lensing use-cases, such as localization and cosmography studies. By numerically solving the lensing diffraction integral, we show that diffraction effects are important when we consider GWs in the LIGO frequency band lensed by objects with masses ≲ 100M☉. We also show that the galaxy hosting the microlenses changes the lensing configuration qualitatively, so we cannot treat the microlenses as isolated point mass lenses when strong lensing is involved. We find that for stellar lenses with masses ∼1M☉, diffraction effects significantly suppress the microlensing magnification. Thus, our results suggest that GWs lensed by typical galaxy or galaxy cluster lenses may offer a relatively clean environment to study the lens system, free of contamination by stellar lenses, which can be advantageous for localization and cosmography studies.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	3326-3336
Number of pages	11
Journal	Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume	503
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab579
Publication status	Published - 1 May 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Project No. 14306218), Research Committee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Croucher Foundation of Hong Kong. We are grateful for computational resources provided by the LIGO Laboratory and support by the National Science Foundation grants PHY-0757058 and PHY-0823459.

Funding Information:
We would like to thank Apratim Ganguly, Ajit Mehta, Anupreeta More, Eungwang Seo, and K. Haris for their insightful comments. Furthermore, we would like to thank Miguel Zumalacarregui for helping with the calculation of the diffraction integral, and also Thomas Collett for related discussions. OAH is supported by the research program of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). TGFL is partially supported by grants from the

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s)

Funding

Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Project No. 14306218), Research Committee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Croucher Foundation of Hong Kong. We are grateful for computational resources provided by the LIGO Laboratory and support by the National Science Foundation grants PHY-0757058 and PHY-0823459. We would like to thank Apratim Ganguly, Ajit Mehta, Anupreeta More, Eungwang Seo, and K. Haris for their insightful comments. Furthermore, we would like to thank Miguel Zumalacarregui for helping with the calculation of the diffraction integral, and also Thomas Collett for related discussions. OAH is supported by the research program of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). TGFL is partially supported by grants from the

Keywords

Gravitational lensing: micro
Gravitational lensing: strong
Gravitational waves

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10.1093/mnras/stab579

stab579Final published version, 2.66 MBLicence: Taverne

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title = "Stellar-mass microlensing of gravitational waves",

abstract = "When gravitational waves (GWs) pass through the nuclear star clusters of galactic lenses, they may be microlensed by the stars. Such microlensing can cause potentially observable beating patterns on the waveform due to waveform superposition and magnify the signal. On the one hand, the beating patterns and magnification could lead to the first detection of a microlensed GW. On the other hand, microlensing introduces a systematic error in strong lensing use-cases, such as localization and cosmography studies. By numerically solving the lensing diffraction integral, we show that diffraction effects are important when we consider GWs in the LIGO frequency band lensed by objects with masses ≲ 100M☉. We also show that the galaxy hosting the microlenses changes the lensing configuration qualitatively, so we cannot treat the microlenses as isolated point mass lenses when strong lensing is involved. We find that for stellar lenses with masses ∼1M☉, diffraction effects significantly suppress the microlensing magnification. Thus, our results suggest that GWs lensed by typical galaxy or galaxy cluster lenses may offer a relatively clean environment to study the lens system, free of contamination by stellar lenses, which can be advantageous for localization and cosmography studies.",

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note = "Funding Information: Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Project No. 14306218), Research Committee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Croucher Foundation of Hong Kong. We are grateful for computational resources provided by the LIGO Laboratory and support by the National Science Foundation grants PHY-0757058 and PHY-0823459. Funding Information: We would like to thank Apratim Ganguly, Ajit Mehta, Anupreeta More, Eungwang Seo, and K. Haris for their insightful comments. Furthermore, we would like to thank Miguel Zumalacarregui for helping with the calculation of the diffraction integral, and also Thomas Collett for related discussions. OAH is supported by the research program of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). TGFL is partially supported by grants from the Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 The Author(s)",

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Stellar-mass microlensing of gravitational waves

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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Keywords

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