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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc,Astrophysics, Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics, astro-ph.CO
Abstract:
Every signal propagating through the universe is at least weakly lensed by
the intervening gravitational field. In some situations, wave-optics phenomena
(diffraction, interference) can be observed as frequency-dependent modulations
of the waveform of gravitational waves (GWs). We will denote these signatures
as Wave-Optics Features (WOFs) and analyze them in detail. Our framework can
efficiently and accurately compute WOF in the single-image regime, of which
weak lensing is a limit. The phenomenology of WOF is rich and offers valuable
information: the dense cusps of individual halos appear as peaks in Green's
function for lensing. If resolved, these features probe the number, effective
masses, spatial distribution and inner profiles of substructures. High
signal-to-noise GW signals reveal WOFs well beyond the Einstein radius, leading
to a fair probability of observation by upcoming detectors such as LISA.
Potential applications of WOF include reconstruction of the lens' projected
density, delensing standard sirens and inferring large-scale structure
morphology and the halo mass function. Because WOF are sourced by light halos
with negligible baryonic content, their detection (or lack thereof) holds
promise to test dark matter scenarios.
