Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2610.18768

Turning Selection Bias into a New Statistic: Asymmetry and Fringes of Lensed Gravitational Waves

Juno C. L. Chan·Elwin K. Y. Li
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Gravitational waves (GWs) propagating across the Universe can be distorted by intervening lenses, producing characteristic wave-optics signatures. These effects are not incorporated into current matched-filtering searches and can therefore substantially reduce detection efficiency. The underlying mechanism is the signal-consistency test, which measures deviations between the observed and expected signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) distributions. We report a systematic study of the impact of gravitational lensing on signal-consistency tests, using a two-image interference model and representative signal-consistency statistics in both the time and frequency domains. We find that overlapping images produce sharply localized SNR residuals in the time domain, breaking the reflection symmetry of the autocorrelation about the merger time. Although interference fringes produce broadband SNR residuals in the frequency domain, both domains exhibit a minimum for high-mass signals when the fringe structure becomes comparable to the signal bandwidth. This highlights a limitation of current strategies that search for distorted lensed signals only among GW events detected by matched-filtering searches. Exploiting this asymmetry, we develop a statistic that separates selected down-ranked lensed injections from noise-background triggers and paired nonlensed injections, without extending the template bank. Our results establish the first connection between lensing observables and detection, paving the way for the discovery of lensed GWs.

Explore related subjects

gr-qcastro-ph.IM

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Juno C. L. Chan, Elwin K. Y. Li. 2026-10-13. Turning Selection Bias into a New Statistic: Asymmetry and Fringes of Lensed Gravitational Waves. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.18768

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Collective Properties of Gravitational Perturbations in Thermal Environments on a Dynamical Background

A thermal plasma dresses soft gauge fields, turning them into collective modes with a plasmon gap and Landau damping. In this paper, we ask whether a thermal radiation plasma does the same to gravitational perturbations. For gravity, the thermal soft scale coincides with the Hubble rate. Any such gap therefore lies at the horizon scale, where the expansion of the background cannot be neglected. We model radiation by a conformal scalar and compute its linear response to metric perturbations directly on a flat FLRW background. We test this response against the diffeomorphism Ward identities. The adiabatic dispersion relation yields a gapped collective mode with $ω_p^2 = 8\mathcal{H}^2/5$, where $\mathcal{H}$ is the conformal Hubble rate. The imaginary part of its frequency, however, is dominated by the background expansion and does not represent Landau damping. In the radiation background, the tensor modes obey a real-time integro-differential equation that reproduces Weinberg's damping of gravitational waves. The initial-time boundary of the retarded response keeps superhorizon modes frozen until horizon reentry despite the gap. The superhorizon growth found in earlier analyses arises from discarding the memory of the retarded response and from a local-equilibrium state prescription that violates the Ward identities. More generally, the Ward identities forbid any local state response beyond the collisionless kernel.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Black hole binaries in shift-symmetric Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity

In shift-symmetric Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, stationary black holes have a non-vanishing scalar charge. During the inspiral, the phase evolution is modified by several effects,primarily an additional scalar dipole radiation, which enters at -1PN order. Including corrections up to 2PN, this effect accelerates the inspiral when compared to general relativity, but changes in the conservative dynamics may do the opposite. Using fully non-linear numerical simulations of quasi-circular, comparable mass binaries, we characterize the late stages of the orbital dynamics. We find that the overall effect is still an accelerated merger phase for the modified gravity case, but noticeably less than predicted by PN alone, which we relate to the conservative dynamics, showing that at the late inspiral stage more energy must be emitted in scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity to induce a given change in frequency. In longer signals, this may lead to a distinctive frequency evolution relative to general relativity as the binary approaches merger, but its effect close to merger is to suppress the difference with GR. This work suggests we may need to revisit existing constraints on the theory that are obtained assuming PN approximations apply up to merger, or based on order by order approximations that neglect backreaction effects on the metric, and shows the importance of including non-linear effects that modify the gravitational sector in the strong field regime.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Symmetries of cosmological perturbations: The residual low-multipole ambiguity

In cosmology, long-wavelength modes are related to large-gauge transformations (LGT), i.e. changes of coordinates that modify the physical geometry of the cosmological patch. These LGTs stand as bona-fide symmetries of cosmological perturbation theory with various applications, from consistency relations constraining cosmological correlators to non-linear conservation laws in the separate-universe approach. In this work, we revisit LGTs and derive two new results. First, we show that the global symmetries already identified in the literature can be extended to local infinite-dimensional symmetries. The associated generators depend on arbitrary functions of time, and generate low-multipole modes that modify the mean curvature energy and the angular momentum of the patch, demonstrating their physical nature. We propose to interpret these low-multipole soft modes as a new cosmological-frame ambiguity that needs to be fixed prior to evaluating cosmological observables. Second, we demonstrate that the adiabatic cosmological perturbations generated by LGTs deform but preserve all the explicit and hidden Killing symmetries of the background geometry. As such, long-wavelength modes stand as a concrete example of algebraically-special cosmological perturbations of Petrov-type O, and inherit the conformal group as isometries and a set of four deformed Killing-Yano tensors and their associated Killing tensors. This opens the possibility to study their effect on cosmological observables in a fully analytic manner.

gr-qc↗