Small-scale shear: Peeling off diffuse subhalos with gravitational waves

Abstract

Subhalos at subgalactic scales ($M\lesssim 10^7{M}_{\odot }$ or $k\gtrsim 10^3{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$) are pristine test beds of dark matter (DM). However, they are too small, diffuse and dark to be visible, in any existing observations. In this paper, we develop a complete formalism for weak and strong diffractive lensing, which can be used to probe such subhalos with chirping gravitational waves (GWs). Also, we show that Navarro-Frenk-White(NFW) subhalos in this mass range can indeed be detected individually, albeit at a rate of $\mathcal{O}(10)$ or less per year at BBO and others limited by small merger rates and large required SNR $\gtrsim 1/\gamma (r_0)\sim 10^3$. It becomes possible as NFW scale radii $r_0$ are of the right size comparable to the GW Fresnel length $r_F$, and unlike all existing probes, their lensing is more sensitive to lighter subhalos. Remarkably, our formalism further reveals that the frequency dependence of weak lensing (which is actually the detectable effect) is due to shear $\gamma$ at $r_F$. Not only is it consistent with an approximate scaling invariance, but it also offers a new way to measure the mass profile at a successively smaller scale of chirping $r_F\propto f^{-1/2}$. Meanwhile, strong diffraction that produces a blurred Einstein ring has a universal frequency dependence, allowing only detections. These are further demonstrated through semianalytic discussions of power-law profiles. Our developments for a single lens can be generalized and will promote diffractive lensing to a more concrete and promising physics in probing DM and small-scale structures.

arXiv comment21 pages, 15 figures

References in corpus (67)

• The Structure of Cold Dark Matter Halos
• Dark Matter Substructure in Galactic Halos
• Large scale bias and the peak background split
• Where are the missing galactic satellites?
• Small-Scale Challenges to the $\Lambda$CDM Paradigm
• Reionization and the abundance of galactic satellites
• Observational and Theoretical Constraints on Singular Dark Matter Halos
• The construction and use of LISA sensitivity curves
• Direct Detection of CDM Substructure
• Microlensing constraints on primordial black holes with the Subaru/HSC Andromeda observation
• Evidence for substructure in lens galaxies?
• A template bank for gravitational waveforms from coalescing binary black holes: non-spinning binaries
• Gravitational detection of a low-mass dark satellite at cosmological distance
• Wave Effects in Gravitational Lensing of Gravitational Waves from Chirping Binaries
• Compound gravitational lensing as a probe of dark matter substructure within galaxy halos
• Formation of the First Stars
• Milky Way Satellite Census. III. Constraints on Dark Matter Properties from Observations of Milky Way Satellite Galaxies
• Detection of lensing substructure using ALMA observations of the dusty galaxy SDP.81
• Warm dark matter chills out: constraints on the halo mass function and the free-streaming length of dark matter with 8 quadruple-image strong gravitational lenses
• Ultra-high precision cosmology from gravitational waves
• Femtolensing by Dark Matter Revisited
• Lensing of Fast Radio Bursts as a Probe of Compact Dark Matter
• Limits on stellar-mass compact objects as dark matter from gravitational lensing of type Ia supernovae
• There is No Missing Satellites Problem
• A New Method for Determining Cumulative Gravitational Lensing Effects in Inhomogeneous Universes
• Tests for Substructure in Gravitational Lenses
• Probing Dark Matter Substructure in Lens Galaxies
• Flux ratios as a probe of dark substructures in quadruple-image gravitational lenses
• SHARP -- VII. New constraints on the dark matter free-streaming properties and substructure abundance from gravitationally lensed quasars
• Gravitational probes of dark matter physics
• Gravitational-Wave Fringes at LIGO: Detecting Compact Dark Matter by Gravitational Lensing
• Post-Newtonian Evolution of Massive Black Hole Triplets in Galactic Nuclei: IV. Implications for LISA
• Detection of substructure with adaptive optics integral field spectroscopy of the gravitational lens B1422+231
• A Resonant Mode for Gravitational Wave Detectors based on Atom Interferometry
• Detecting Lensing-Induced Diffraction in Astrophysical Gravitational Waves
• Pulsar Timing Probes of Primordial Black Holes and Subhalos
• Discovering intermediate-mass black hole lenses through gravitational wave lensing
• Properties of Dark Subhaloes from Gaps in Tidal Streams
• Observational signatures of microlensing in gravitational waves at LIGO/Virgo frequencies
• Constraining sterile neutrino cosmologies with strong gravitational lensing observations at redshift z~0.2
• Measuring the power spectrum of dark matter substructure using strong gravitational lensing
• Detecting Stellar Lensing of Gravitational Waves with Ground-Based Observatories
• The Importance of Intergalactic Structure to Gravitationally Lensed Quasars
• Probing Dark Low-mass Halos and Primordial Black Holes with Frequency-dependent Gravitational Lensing Dispersions of Gravitational Waves
• Evidence of a population of dark subhalos from Gaia and Pan-STARRS observations of the GD-1 stream
• On the Effects of Line-of-Sight Structures on Lensing Flux-ratio Anomalies in a LCDM Universe
• Dark Matter Substructure Detection Using Spatially Resolved Spectroscopy of Lensed Dusty Galaxies
• Substructure in the lens HE 0435-1223
• Lensing Optical Depth for Substructure and Isolated Dark Matter Halos
• Detecting Dark Matter Substructures around the Milky Way with Gaia
• On the Power Spectrum of Dark Matter Substructure in Strong Gravitational Lenses
• Amplitude and Phase Fluctuations for Gravitational Waves Propagating through Inhomogeneous Mass Distribution in the Universe
• Gravitational lensing as a probe of cold dark matter subhalos
• The effect of low mass substructures on the Cusp lensing relation
• Wave effects in the microlensing of pulsars and FRBs by point masses
• Concentration, Ellipsoidal Collapse, and the Densest Dark Matter haloes
• Scattering of gravitational radiation: second order moments of the wave amplitude
• First Results on Dark Matter Substructure from Astrometric Weak Lensing
• Stellar Wakes from Dark Matter Subhalos
• Beyond subhalos: Probing the collective effect of the Universe's small-scale structure with gravitational lensing
• GRB lensing parallax: Closing primordial black hole dark matter mass window
• Probing For Machos of Mass $10^{-15}{M}_{\odot }$-$10^{-7}{M}_{\odot }$ with Gamma-Ray Burst Parallax Spacecraft
• Integral Field Spectroscopy of the Quadruply Lensed Quasar 1RXS J1131-1231: New Light on Lens Substructures
• Convergence and Efficiency of Different Methods to Compute the Diffraction Integral for Gravitational Lensing of Gravitational Waves
• Exact Wave Propagation in a Spacetime with a Cosmic String
• Probing cold dark matter subhalos with simulated ALMA observations of macrolensed sub-mm galaxies
• Probing Cosmic Strings with Gravitational-Wave Fringe

Cited by in corpus (25)

• Cosmology with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
• Gravitational wave lensing as a probe of halo properties and dark matter
• Lensing of gravitational waves: efficient wave-optics methods and validation with symmetric lenses
• Probing the nature of dark matter via gravitational waves lensed by small dark matter halos
• Weakly Lensed Gravitational Waves: Probing Cosmic Structures with Wave-Optics Features
• Microlensing of gravitational waves by dark matter structures
• Halo Formation from Yukawa Forces in the Very Early Universe
• Lensing of gravitational waves: universal signatures in the beating pattern
• Amplitude and phase fluctuations of gravitational waves magnified by strong gravitational lensing
• GLoW: novel methods for wave-optics phenomena in gravitational lensing
• Coexistence Test of Primordial Black Holes and Particle Dark Matter from Diffractive Lensing
• Gravitational wave microlensing by dressed primordial black holes
• Multi-messenger Gravitational Lensing
• Signatures of dark and baryonic structures on weakly lensed gravitational waves
• Compact Binaries through a Lens: Silent vs. Detectable Microlensing for the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Gravitational Wave Observatories
• Parameter estimation of microlensed gravitational waves with Conditional Variational Autoencoders
• Solar Diffraction of LIGO-Band Gravitational Waves
• Universal relation between the variances of distortions of gravitational waves owing to gravitational lensing
• The Born approximation in wave optics gravitational lensing revisited
• Gravitational wave lensing: probing Fuzzy Dark Matter with LISA
• Probing Binary Lens Caustics with Gravitational Waves: A Uniform Approximation Approach
• New Consistency Relations between Averages and Variances of Weakly Lensed Signals of Gravitational Waves
• Theoretical Radio Signals from Radio-Band Gravitational Waves Converted from the Neutron Star Magnetic Field
• Parameter inference of millilensed gravitational waves using neural spline flows
• Across the Universe: GW231123 as a magnified and diffracted black hole merger