Gravitational Wave Interference via Gravitational Lensing: Measurements of Luminosity Distance, Lens Mass, and Cosmological Parameters

TL;DR

This paper explores how gravitational lensing of gravitational waves creates interference patterns that can be used to measure distances, lens masses, and cosmological parameters, enhancing our understanding of the universe.

Contribution

It introduces a method to analyze gravitational wave beat patterns caused by lensing to extract key astrophysical and cosmological information.

Findings

Detection of characteristic beat patterns in gravitational wave signals.

Ability to determine true luminosity distances of binary systems.

Inference of lens mass and cosmological parameters from signal analysis.

Abstract

The gravitational lensing of gravitational waves might cause beat patterns detectable by interferometers. The feature of this kind of signal is the existence of the beat pattern in the early inspiral phase, followed by a seemingly randomly changing profile. After the strain peaks for the first time, the signal takes the usual waveform and the strain peaks for the second time. Once this signal is detected, the actual magnification factors can be obtained, so the true luminosity distance of the binary system is known. If the lens can be described by a point mass or a singular isothermal sphere, the functional forms of the time delay and the magnification factors are simple enough, so we can infer the mass of the lens or the cosmological parameters.