The diffraction-lensing interpretation of GW231123 with astrophysical priors

Abstract

GW231123, if unlensed, is a rare binary black hole merger with high masses and high spins for both progenitors. We show that the signal is better fitted by a lower-mass, lower-spin merger that is diffraction-lensed by an isolated object of redshifted mass $\sim 1000\,\rm M_\odot$, modeled either as a point mass or as a spherically symmetric compact halo. Because diffraction-lensed events are also rare, hypothesis testing should quote the posterior odds ratio rather than the Bayes factor, which requires quantifying our prior belief in the two hypotheses. We adopt the GWTC-5 population distribution as our source parameter prior, and quantify the prior on the lens hypothesis through the lensing optical depth. For a point-mass lens, observational constraints on the abundance of black holes in the Universe yield an upper bound on the optical depth, and hence on the posterior odds, which do not rule out lensing. However, using a predicted mass function of intermediate-mass black holes formed in star clusters gives a low optical depth that strongly disfavors lensing. For a dark matter halo lens, standard collisionless cold dark matter does not form halos compact enough to give the required optical depth, but self-interacting dark matter with a large cross section at low velocities can trigger gravothermal collapse and form them, in which case the posterior odds are inconclusive. In either case, from a frequentist perspective, we show that detecting a lensed event with properties like GW231123 is unlikely. These conclusions apply to isolated lenses, while a lens embedded in an external gravitational potential could change the picture.