Gravitational-wave Astronomy through the magnifying glass
Our Universe is still largely a mystery. Elusive dark matter shapes cosmic structures, while the Universe expands at a rate that we struggle to understand. Unraveling these fundamental open questions demands a deeper look into the distant cosmos, where gravitational waves from stellar-mass binary black holes offer a unique window of observation.
Unlike electromagnetic signals, gravitational waves traverse the Universe without alteration, except for gravitational lensing. Their long wavelengths make them susceptible to diffraction by cosmic structures, providing an unprecedented opportunity to map dark matter and test the foundations of gravity. If we can recover these lensed signals, we gain a cosmic magnifying glass to observe the most distant black hole mergers and illuminate their origins. Current gravitational-wave observations have already produced puzzling lensed candidates (e.g., GW231123), and the first definitive detections are expected very soon.
In this talk, I will explain why gravitational-wave lensing is uniquely informative, outline how deep‑learning methods can accelerate its discovery, and show what first detections could reveal about dark‑matter substructure and astrophysical populations.
Host: Davide Gerosa