Probing the nature of dark matter via gravitational waves lensed by small dark matter halos

Abstract

Dark matter (DM) occupies the majority of matter content in the universe and is probably cold (CDM). However, modifications to the standard CDM model may be required by the small-scale observations, and DM may be self-interacting (SIDM) or warm (WDM). Here we show that the diffractive lensing of gravitational waves (GWs) from binary black hole mergers by small halos ($\sim 10^3-10^6{M}_{\odot }$; mini-halos) may serve as a clean probe to the nature of DM, free from the contamination of baryonic processes in the DM studies based on dwarf/satellite galaxies. The expected lensed GW signals and event rates resulting from CDM, WDM, and SIDM models are significantly different from each other, because of the differences in halo density profiles and abundances predicted by these models. We estimate the detection rates of such lensed GW events for a number of current and future GW detectors, such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatories (LIGO), the Einstein Telescope (ET), the Cosmic Explorer (CE), Gravitational-wave Lunar Observatory for Cosmology (GLOC), the Deci-Hertz Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (DECIGO), and the Big Bang Observer (BBO). We find that GLOC may detect one such events per year assuming the CDM model, DECIGO (BBO) may detect more than several (hundreds of) such events per year, by assuming the CDM, WDM (with mass $>30$\,keV) or SIDM model, suggesting that the DM nature may be strongly constrained by DECIGO and BBO via the detection of diffractive lensed GW events by mini-halos. Other GW detectors are unlikely to detect a significant number of such events within a limited observational time period. However, if the inner slope of the mini-halo density profile is sufficiently steeper than the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profile, e.g., the pseudo-Jaffe profile, one may be able to detect one to more than hundred such GW events by ET and CE.

12 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in PRD

References in corpus (15)

• Ultralight scalars as cosmological dark matter
• Model Waveform Accuracy Standards for Gravitational Wave Data Analysis
• Current status of direct dark matter detection experiments
• Strong gravitational lensing of gravitational waves from double compact binaries - perspectives for the Einstein Telescope
• Probing Dark Low-mass Halos and Primordial Black Holes with Frequency-dependent Gravitational Lensing Dispersions of Gravitational Waves
• On the waveforms of gravitationally lensed gravitational waves
• Lensing of gravitational waves as a probe of compact dark matter
• Wave effects in the microlensing of pulsars and FRBs by point masses
• Small-scale shear: Peeling off diffuse subhalos with gravitational waves
• A Higher Probability of Detecting Lensed Supermassive Black Hole Binaries by LISA
• Convergence and Efficiency of Different Methods to Compute the Diffraction Integral for Gravitational Lensing of Gravitational Waves
• Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background and Eccentric Stellar Compact Binaries
• Measuring the viscosity of dark matter with strongly lensed gravitational waves
• Direct measurement of the distribution of dark matter with strongly lensed gravitational waves
• On Detecting Stellar Binary Black Holes via the LISA-Taiji Network

Cited by in corpus (28)

• 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
• Strongly Lensed Transient Sources: A Review
• Weakly Lensed Gravitational Waves: Probing Cosmic Structures with Wave-Optics Features
• Microlensing of gravitational waves by dark matter structures
• Probing wave-optics effects and low-mass dark matter halos with lensing of gravitational waves from massive black holes
• Gravitational Lensing of Gravitational Waves: Probability of Microlensing in Galaxy-Scale Lens Population
• GLoW: novel methods for wave-optics phenomena in gravitational lensing
• Gravitational wave microlensing by dressed primordial black holes
• Spin wave optics for gravitational waves lensed by a Kerr black hole
• Discriminating power of milli-lensing observations for dark matter models
• On the detection of the electromagnetic counterparts from lensed gravitational wave events by binary neutron star mergers
• Signatures of dark and baryonic structures on weakly lensed gravitational waves
• On Detecting Nearby Nano-Hertz Gravitational Wave Sources via Pulsar Timing Arrays
• 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
• Detecting Dark Compact Objects in Gaia DR4: A Data Analysis Pipeline for Transient Astrometric Lensing Searches
• Detectability of strongly lensed gravitational waves using model-independent image parameters
• Event Rate of Strongly Lensed Gravitational Waves of Stellar Binary Black Hole Mergers Produced by Dynamical Interactions
• Revealing Dark Matter's Role in Neutron Stars Anisotropy: A Bayesian Approach Using Multi-messenger Observations
• The Born approximation in wave optics gravitational lensing revisited
• Gravitational wave lensing: probing Fuzzy Dark Matter with LISA
• The Impact of Dark Matter on Gravitational Wave Detection by Space-based Interferometers
• Schwarzschild Lensing From Geodesic Deviation
• Particle Conversions Beyond the WKB Approximation and Solar-Induced Gravitational Waves from Dark Photon Dark Matter
• Bayesian Analysis of Wave-Optics Gravitationally Lensed Massive Black Hole Binaries with Space-Based Gravitational Wave Detector
• Gravitational Lensing of Gravitational Waves from Astrophysical Sources: Theory, Detection, and Applications
• Parameter inference of millilensed gravitational waves using neural spline flows