Lensing by primordial black holes: constraints from gravitational wave observations

Abstract

Primordial black holes (PBHs) have been proposed to explain at least a portion of dark matter. Observations have put strong constraints on PBHs in terms of the fraction of dark matter which they can represent, $f_{\mathrm{PBH}}$, across a wide mass range -- apart from the stellar-mass range of $20M_{\odot }\lesssim M_{\mathrm{PBH}}\lesssim 100M_{\odot }$. In this paper, we explore the possibility that such PBHs could serve as point-mass lenses capable of altering the gravitational-wave (GW) signals observed from binary black hole (BBH) mergers along their line-of-sight. We find that careful GW data analysis could verify the existence of such PBHs based on the $fittingfactor$ and odds ratio analyses. When such a lensed GW signal is detected, we expect to be able to measure the redshifted mass of the lens with a relative error $\Delta M_{\mathrm{PBH}}/M_{\mathrm{PBH}}\lesssim 0.3$. If no such lensed GW events were detected despite the operation of sensitive GW detectors accumulating large numbers of BBH mergers, it would translate into a stringent constraint of $f_{\mathrm{PBH}}\lesssim 10^{-2}-10^{-5}$ for PBHs with a mass larger than $\sim 10M_{\odot }$ by the Einstein Telescope after one year of running, and $f_{\mathrm{PBH}}\lesssim 0.2$ for PBHs with mass greater than $\sim 50M_{\odot }$ for advanced LIGO after ten years of running.

10 pages, 4 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (30)

• Cosmic Star Formation History
• GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• GW170814: A Three-Detector Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Coalescence
• GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of $150M_{\odot }$
• GW170608: Observation of a 19-solar-mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence
• Exploring the Sensitivity of Next Generation Gravitational Wave Detectors
• Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter
• Limits on the Macho Content of the Galactic Halo from the EROS-2 Survey of the Magellanic Clouds
• GW190412: Observation of a Binary-Black-Hole Coalescence with Asymmetric Masses
• Properties and astrophysical implications of the 150 Msun binary black hole merger GW190521
• Cosmic microwave background limits on accreting primordial black holes
• Model Waveform Accuracy Standards for Gravitational Wave Data Analysis
• The Effect of Pair-Instability Mass Loss on Black Hole Mergers
• Implementing a search for aligned-spin neutron star -- black hole systems with advanced ground based gravitational wave detectors
• A Gravitational Wave Detector with Cosmological Reach
• Search for gravitational lensing signatures in LIGO-Virgo binary black hole events
• Farthest Neighbor: The Distant Milky Way Satellite Eridanus II
• On the Reported Death of the MACHO Era
• Phase effects from strong gravitational lensing of gravitational waves
• What if LIGO's gravitational wave detections are strongly lensed by massive galaxy clusters?
• Observational signatures of microlensing in gravitational waves at LIGO/Virgo frequencies
• Constraining the abundance of primordial black holes with gravitational lensing of gravitational waves at LIGO frequencies
• Please repeat: Strong lensing of gravitational waves as a probe of compact binary and galaxy populations
• A Parameter Estimation Method that Directly Compares Gravitational Wave Observations to Numerical Relativity
• Stellar-mass microlensing of gravitational waves
• Impact of astrophysical binary coalescence timescales on the rate of lensed gravitational wave events
• Gravitational Wave Interference via Gravitational Lensing: Measurements of Luminosity Distance, Lens Mass, and Cosmological Parameters
• Cosmological implications of Primordial Black Holes
• Constraining the lensing of binary black holes from their stochastic background
• Probing compact dark matter with gravitational wave fringes detected by the Einstein Telescope

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Lensing of gravitational waves as a probe of compact dark matter