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Discovering intermediate-mass black hole lenses through gravitational wave lensing

4 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

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abstract

Intermediate-mass black holes are the missing link that connects stellar-mass to supermassive black holes and are key to understanding galaxy evolution. Gravitational waves, like photons, can be lensed, leading to discernable effects such as diffraction or repeated signals. We investigate the detectability of intermediate-mass black hole deflectors in the LIGO-Virgo detector network. In particular, we simulate gravitational waves with variable source distributions lensed by an astrophysical population of intermediate-mass black holes, and use standard LIGO tools to infer the properties of these lenses. We find detections of intermediate-mass black holes at $98\%$ confidence level over a wide range of binary and lens parameters. Therefore, we conclude that intermediate-mass black holes could be detected through lensing of gravitational waves in the LIGO-Virgo detector network.

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2026 2 2025 2

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representative citing papers

Wave-optics gravitational wave lensing in modified gravity

gr-qc · 2026-05-20 · unverdicted · novelty 8.0

In a curvature-coupled propagation framework for modified gravity, gravitational-wave lensing in wave optics shows persistent infrared interactions that prevent the amplification factor from approaching unity at zero frequency, requiring an interacting Green function and partial-wave treatment.

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