Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves: universal characteristics of strongly lensed memory waveforms

Abstract

In this work, the strong lensing effect of the memory signal was considered. In the geometric optics limit, the lensed memory signal becomes oscillatory, while the unlensed is basically monotonic. This is because only the high frequency Fourier modes contribute strongly to the lensed signal. Due to the step function like behavior of the unlensed memory waveform, the lensed waveform possesses characteristic morphology that is dependent on the type of the image, but independent of the lens model and the binary system. That is, for each type of the lensed image, the lensed memory waveform has an approximate reflection symmetry about a symmetrical axis in the time domain. More specifically, for the type I and type III images, the lensed memory signals are nearly odd under the reflection, while the type II signal is roughly even. In addition, at the symmetrical axis, the sign of the slope for type I image is different from that for the type III image. These universal characteristic features would help determine the type of the lensed image. This is particularly because the memory waveform can be well approximated by a suitable step function, which involves just two parameters, the overall amplitude and the time of arrival. It is fast and cheap to simulate this approximated waveform. Once the type of the lensed image is determined with the approximated memory waveform, one can use the appropriate waveform template for the oscillatory component of the gravitational wave to perform the parameter estimation.