No Arabic abstract
With increasing sensitivities of the current ground-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors, the prospects of detecting a strongly lensed GW signal are going to be high in the coming years. When such a signal passes through an intervening lensing galaxy or galaxy cluster, the embedded stellar-mass microlenses lead to interference patterns in the signal that may leave observable signatures. In this work, we present an extensive study of these wave effects in the LIGO/Virgo frequency band ($10$-$10^4$ Hz) due to the presence of the microlens population in galaxy-scale lenses for the first time. We consider a wide range of strong lensing (macro) magnifications and the corresponding surface microlens densities found in lensing galaxies and use them to generate realisations of the amplification factor. The methodologies for simulating amplification curves for both types of images (minima and saddle points) are also discussed. We then study how microlensing is broadly affected by the parameters like macro-magnifications, stellar densities, the initial mass function (IMF), types of images, and microlens distribution around the source. In general, with increasing macro-magnification values, the effects of microlensing become increasingly significant regardless of other parameters. Mismatch analysis between the lensed and the unlensed GW waveforms from chirping binaries suggests that, while inferring the source parameters, microlensing can not be neglected for macro-magnification $gtrsim 15$. Furthermore, for extremely high macro-magnifications $gtrsim 100$, the mismatch can even exceed $5%$, which can result in both a missed detection and, consequently, a missed lensed signal.
Discovery of strongly-lensed gravitational wave (GW) sources will unveil binary compact objects at higher redshifts and lower intrinsic luminosities than is possible without lensing. Such systems will yield unprecedented constraints on the mass distribution in galaxy clusters, measurements of the polarization of GWs, tests of General Relativity, and constraints on the Hubble parameter. Excited by these prospects, and intrigued by the presence of so-called heavy black holes in the early detections by LIGO-Virgo, we commenced a search for strongly-lensed GWs and possible electromagnetic counterparts in the latter stages of the second LIGO observing run (O2). Here, we summarise our calculation of the detection rate of strongly-lensed GWs, describe our review of BBH detections from O1, outline our observing strategy in O2, summarize our follow-up observations of GW170814, and discuss the future prospects of detection.
The number of strong lens systems is expected to increase significantly in ongoing and upcoming surveys. With an increase in the total number of such systems we expect to discover many configurations that correspond to unstable caustics. In such cases, the instability can be used to our advantage for constraining the lens model. We have implemented algorithms for detection of different types of singularities in gravitational lensing. We test our approach on a variety of lens models and then go on to apply it to the inferred mass distribution for Abell 697 as an example application. We propose to represent lenses using A3-lines and singular points (A4 and D4) in the image plane. We propose this as a compact representation of complex lens systems that can capture all the details in a single snapshot.
We provide a detailed treatment and comparison of the weak lensing effects due to large-scale structure (LSS), or scalar density perturbations and those due to gravitational waves(GW) or tensor perturbations, on the temperature and polarization power spectra of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We carry out the analysis both in real space by using the correlation function method, as well as in the spherical harmonic space. We find an intriguing similarity between the lensing kernels associated with LSS lensing and GW lensing. It is found that the lensing kernels only differ in relative negative signs and their form is very reminiscent of even and odd parity bipolar spherical harmonic coefficients. Through a numerical study of these lensing kernels, we establish that lensing due to GW is more efficient at distorting the CMB spectra as compared to LSS lensing, particularly for the polarization power spectra. Finally we argue that the CMB B-mode power spectra measurements can be used to place interesting constraints on GW energy densities.
Wave Dark Matter (WaveDM) has recently gained attention as a viable candidate to account for the dark matter content of the Universe. In this paper we explore the extent to which dark matter halos in this model, and under what conditions, are able to reproduce strong lensing systems. First, we analytically explore the lensing properties of the model -- finding that a pure WaveDM density profile, a soliton profile, produces a weaker lensing effect than other similar cored profiles. Then we analyze models with a soliton embedded in an NFW profile, as has been found in numerical simulations of structure formation. We use a benchmark model with a boson mass of $m_a=10^{-22}{rm eV}$, for which we see that there is a bi-modality in the contribution of the external NFW part of the profile, and actually some of the free parameters associated with it are not well constrained. We find that for configurations with boson masses $10^{-23}$ -- $10^{-22}{rm eV}$, a range of masses preferred by dwarf galaxy kinematics, the soliton profile alone can fit the data but its size is incompatible with the luminous extent of the lens galaxies. Likewise, boson masses of the order of $10^{-21}{rm eV}$, which would be consistent with Lyman-$alpha$ constraints and consist of more compact soliton configurations, necessarily require the NFW part in order to reproduce the observed Einstein radii. We then conclude that lens systems impose a conservative lower bound $m_a > 10^{-24}$ and that the NFW envelope around the soliton must be present to satisfy the observational requirements.
We discuss the gravitational lensing of gravitational wave signals from coalescing binaries. We delineate the regime where wave effects are significant from the regime where geometric limit can be used. Further, we focus on the effect of micro-lensing and the combined effect of strong lensing and micro-lensing. We find that micro-lensing combined with strong lensing can introduce time varying phase shift in the signal and hence can lead to detectable differences in the signal observed for different images produced by strong lensing. This, coupled with the coarse localization of signal source in the sky for gravitational wave detections, can make it difficult to identify the common origin of signal corresponding to different images and use observables like time delay. In case we can reliably identify corresponding images, micro-lensing of individual images can be used as a tool to constrain properties of micro-lenses. Sources of gravitational waves can undergo microlensing due to lenses in the disk/halo of the Galaxy, or due to lenses in an intervening galaxy even in absence of strong lensing. In general the probability for this is small with one exception: Extragalactic sources of gravitational waves that lie in the galactic plane are highly likely to be micro-lensed. Wave effects are extremely important for such cases. In case of detections of such sources with low SNR, the uncertainty of occurrence of microlensing or otherwise introduces an additional uncertainty in the parameters of the source.