Galactic and extragalactic probe of dark matter with LISA's binary black holes

TL;DR

This paper explores how the upcoming LISA gravitational wave observatory can detect or constrain dark matter properties around galactic and extragalactic black hole binaries by analyzing variations in their chirp mass.

Contribution

It demonstrates LISA's potential to probe dark matter distributions around black hole binaries through gravitational wave signals, including the ability to rule out certain dark matter models.

Findings

LISA can probe dark matter within ~1 Gpc for binaries near galactic centers.

Detection of no dark matter effects can constrain dark matter parameter space.

LISA's observations can distinguish between particle-like and wave-like dark matter scenarios.

Abstract

The upcoming LISA mission will be able to detect gravitational waves from galactic and extragalactic compact binaries. Here, we report on LISA's capability to probe dark matter around these binaries if the latter constitute black holes. By analyzing the variation in the chirp mass of the binary, we show that depending on the black hole masses, LISA should be able to probe their surrounding dark matter to a luminosity distance of $\approx 1$ Gpc if such binaries are observed within the inner $\approx 10$ pc of their galactic center for particle-like dark matter or near the galactic solitonic core for wave-like dark matter. In the case a null result is recorded during the course of observation of \emph{well-localized} binaries, one can still rule out certain parameter spaces of dark matter as being the dominant contributor to the matter budget of the Universe.