Emergence of Fresnel diffraction zones in gravitational lensing by a cosmic string

Abstract

The possibility to detect cosmic strings -- topological defects of early Universe, by means of wave effects in gravitational lensing is discussed. To find the optimal observation conditions, we define the hyperbolic-shaped Fresnel observation zones associated with the diffraction maxima and analyse the frequency patterns of wave amplification corresponding to different alignments. In particular, we show that diffraction of gravitational waves by the string may lead to significant amplification at cosmological distances. The wave properties we found are quite different from what one would expect, for instance, from light scattered off a thin wire or slit, since a cosmic string, as a topological defect, gives no shadow at all.

11 pages, 9 figures; discussion on observational consequences is extended, new references added; to appear in Phys. Lett. A

References in corpus (3)

• Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
• Exact Wave Propagation in a Spacetime with a Cosmic String
• Wave diffraction by a cosmic string

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• Compact Binaries through a Lens: Silent vs. Detectable Microlensing for the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Gravitational Wave Observatories
• Probing Cosmic Strings with Gravitational-Wave Fringe
• Parameter estimation of microlensed gravitational waves with Conditional Variational Autoencoders
• Probing cosmic strings via gravitational-wave lensing
• Parameter inference of millilensed gravitational waves using neural spline flows