Machine Learning Assisted Parameter-Space Searches for Lensed Gravitational Waves

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Campailla, Giulia, Raveri, Marco, Hu, Wayne, Ezquiaga, Jose María
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Campailla, Giulia
Raveri, Marco
Hu, Wayne
Ezquiaga, Jose María
author_facet Campailla, Giulia
Raveri, Marco
Hu, Wayne
Ezquiaga, Jose María
contents When a gravitational wave encounters a massive object along the line of sight, repeated copies of the original signal may be produced due to gravitational lensing. In this paper, we develop a series of new machine-learning based statistical methods to identify promising strong lensing candidates in gravitational wave catalogs. We employ state-of-the-art normalizing flow generative models to perform statistical calculations on the posterior distributions of gravitational wave events that would otherwise be computationally unfeasible. Our lensing identification strategy, developed on two simulated gravitational wave catalogs that test noise realization and event signal variations, selects event pairs with low parameter differences in the optimal detector basis that also have a high information content and favorable likelihood for coincident parameters. We then apply our method to the GWTC-3 catalog and find a single pair still consistent with the lensing hypothesis. This pair has been previously identified through more costly evidence ratio techniques, but rejected on astrophysical grounds, which further validates our technique.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_06901
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Machine Learning Assisted Parameter-Space Searches for Lensed Gravitational Waves
Campailla, Giulia
Raveri, Marco
Hu, Wayne
Ezquiaga, Jose María
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
When a gravitational wave encounters a massive object along the line of sight, repeated copies of the original signal may be produced due to gravitational lensing. In this paper, we develop a series of new machine-learning based statistical methods to identify promising strong lensing candidates in gravitational wave catalogs. We employ state-of-the-art normalizing flow generative models to perform statistical calculations on the posterior distributions of gravitational wave events that would otherwise be computationally unfeasible. Our lensing identification strategy, developed on two simulated gravitational wave catalogs that test noise realization and event signal variations, selects event pairs with low parameter differences in the optimal detector basis that also have a high information content and favorable likelihood for coincident parameters. We then apply our method to the GWTC-3 catalog and find a single pair still consistent with the lensing hypothesis. This pair has been previously identified through more costly evidence ratio techniques, but rejected on astrophysical grounds, which further validates our technique.
title Machine Learning Assisted Parameter-Space Searches for Lensed Gravitational Waves
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06901