Impact on time delays due to milli-lensing by subhalos on lensed gravitational waves

Abstract

Dark matter substructure properties such as their mass function and spatial distribution depend on the nature of dark matter and are strong tests of the cosmological model. Like luminous matter, these dark matter substructures cause gravitational lensing affecting observables such as time delays. Given the millisecond-level timing precision achievable with current and future gravitational-wave (GW) detectors, gravitationally lensed GWs provide a powerful probe of dark matter substructure, especially, at the lower end of the mass function. In contrast, the optical (or electromagnetic) observations can provide a precision of a few hours and are thus, not sensitive to deflections from the less massive subhalos. In this work, we investigate the impact of realistic population of DM subhalos ($10^6-10^9 M_\odot$) on the lensing time delays for two of the typical strong lens configurations, a fold and a cusp, seen in quadruply lensed sources for a galaxy-scale lens. We find that the subhalos with NFW density profiles cause perturbations of the order of few hours to the lensing time delays between the macro-lensed images produced by the main lensing galaxy. These time delay"anomalies", if not accounted for, may affect the results of strong lens searches conducted on the GW data by the LIGO--Virgo--Kagra collaboration. Lastly, for the 200 realisations analysed per fold and cusp lens systems, we find that the NFW subhalos produced no additional images of their own called milli-images. Statistical studies are needed to better determine the expected impact on the lensed GW time delays and (non-)detection of milli-images.