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arXiv · 2607.03345

Strong-lensing effects in high-redshift massive black-hole binary population inference

Yan-Heng Jin·Wen-Biao Han
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Abstract

High-redshift massive black-hole binary (MBHB) mergers provide a probe of black-hole seed formation and early galaxy assembly, but the population detected by LISA can be modified by galaxy-scale strong lensing. We quantify this effect for MBHB mergers at $10\leq z\leq20$ and assess its impact on the inference of intrinsic formation-channel fractions. We use four channels, corresponding to light- and heavy-seed scenarios with delayed and non-delayed mergers, and compute 4-year LISA-detectable event numbers with and without strong lensing. To bracket the uncertain lens population, we compare a conservative velocity-dispersion-function (VDF) prescription with an optimistic halo-mass-function (HMF)-based prescription. We consider a reference mixture with equal seed-channel weights and additional mixtures in which the intrinsic seed population is weighted toward selected formation channels, and jointly infer the formation fractions and the strength of the lensing contribution. Strong lensing does not affect all channels equally: it can change the detected channel mixture as well as the total number of detections. This effect is weak for the conservative VDF prescription, but becomes significant in the high-lensing-rate HMF case, where neglecting strong lensing can bias the recovered formation fractions. The inference precision depends on the underlying intrinsic channel composition, while the lensing contribution is more accurately recovered in the high-lensing-rate case. These results indicate that galaxy-scale strong-lensing effects and event-count information should be included when using high-redshift MBHB detections to infer intrinsic formation-channel fractions.

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Yan-Heng Jin, Wen-Biao Han. 2026-07-03. Strong-lensing effects in high-redshift massive black-hole binary population inference. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.03345

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