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

[2510.09132] Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves: universal characteristics of strongly lensed memory waveforms Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Search arXiv Press Enter to search · Advanced search General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology arXiv:2510.09132 (gr-qc) [Submitted on 10 Oct 2025 ( v1 ), last revised 14 Jul 2026 (this version, v2)] Title: Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves: universal characteristics of strongly lensed memory waveforms Authors: Ruanjing Zhang , Zhi-Chao Zhao , Shaoqi Hou , Xi-Long Fan , Kai Liao , Zong-Hong Zhu View a PDF of the paper titled Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves: universal characteristics of strongly lensed memory waveforms, by Ruanjing Zhang and 5 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) 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. Comments: 20 pages, 8 figures. comments are welcome Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) Cite as: arXiv:2510.09132 [gr-qc] (or arXiv:2510.09132v2 [gr-qc] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.09132 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Journal reference: Phys. Rev. D 114, 044044 (2026) Related DOI : https://doi.org/10.1103/dxg5-7wqr Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources Submission history From: Shaoqi Hou [ view email ] [v1] Fri, 10 Oct 2025 08:30:45 UTC (168 KB) [v2] Tue, 14 Jul 2026 23:29:04 UTC (218 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves: universal characteristics of strongly lensed memory waveforms, by Ruanjing Zhang and 5 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: gr-qc < prev | next > new | recent | 2025-10 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... 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