Discovering gravitational waveform distortions from lensing: a deep dive into GW231123

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Chan, Juno C. L., Ezquiaga, Jose María, Lo, Rico K. L., Bowman, Joey, Zertuche, Lorena Magaña, Vujeva, Luka
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Chan, Juno C. L.
Ezquiaga, Jose María
Lo, Rico K. L.
Bowman, Joey
Zertuche, Lorena Magaña
Vujeva, Luka
author_facet Chan, Juno C. L.
Ezquiaga, Jose María
Lo, Rico K. L.
Bowman, Joey
Zertuche, Lorena Magaña
Vujeva, Luka
contents Gravitational waves (GWs) are unique messengers as they travel through the Universe without alteration except for gravitational lensing. Their long wavelengths make them susceptible to diffraction by cosmic structures, providing an unprecedented opportunity to map dark matter substructures. Identifying lensed events requires the analysis of thousands to millions of simulated events to reach high statistical significances. This is computationally prohibitive with standard GW parameter estimation methods. We exploit DINGO-lensing, a deep-learning algorithm that accelerates the inference from CPU days to minutes to thoroughly reanalyze GW231123, the most promising lensing candidate to date. By performing more than 200,000 simulations with 3 different waveform models, we find that its statistical significance is below 4$σ$ and the event cannot be claimed as lensed. We observe that 8% of GW231123-like nonlensed simulations favor lensing, which could be explained by the self-similarity of short-duration signals. Still, 58% of GW231123-like lensed simulations have larger support for lensing, showing that higher detection statistics are possible. We show that analyzing simulations with different waveform models only lowers the significance, highlighting the relevance of waveform systematics. Although GW231123 exposes the challenges of claiming the first GW lensing detection, our deep-learning methods have demonstrated to be powerful enough to enable the upcoming discovery of lensed GWs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_16916
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Discovering gravitational waveform distortions from lensing: a deep dive into GW231123
Chan, Juno C. L.
Ezquiaga, Jose María
Lo, Rico K. L.
Bowman, Joey
Zertuche, Lorena Magaña
Vujeva, Luka
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Gravitational waves (GWs) are unique messengers as they travel through the Universe without alteration except for gravitational lensing. Their long wavelengths make them susceptible to diffraction by cosmic structures, providing an unprecedented opportunity to map dark matter substructures. Identifying lensed events requires the analysis of thousands to millions of simulated events to reach high statistical significances. This is computationally prohibitive with standard GW parameter estimation methods. We exploit DINGO-lensing, a deep-learning algorithm that accelerates the inference from CPU days to minutes to thoroughly reanalyze GW231123, the most promising lensing candidate to date. By performing more than 200,000 simulations with 3 different waveform models, we find that its statistical significance is below 4$σ$ and the event cannot be claimed as lensed. We observe that 8% of GW231123-like nonlensed simulations favor lensing, which could be explained by the self-similarity of short-duration signals. Still, 58% of GW231123-like lensed simulations have larger support for lensing, showing that higher detection statistics are possible. We show that analyzing simulations with different waveform models only lowers the significance, highlighting the relevance of waveform systematics. Although GW231123 exposes the challenges of claiming the first GW lensing detection, our deep-learning methods have demonstrated to be powerful enough to enable the upcoming discovery of lensed GWs.
title Discovering gravitational waveform distortions from lensing: a deep dive into GW231123
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16916