Speaker
Disha Hegde
(UCLouvain)
Description
The exceptional gravitational-wave event GW231123 exhibited unusually high total mass and near-extremal spins, while revealing strong waveform-dependent variations in its inferred source properties. Several follow-up studies favored a lensed interpretation, with reduced waveform systematics,raising whether apparent lensing evidence could arise from waveform modeling systematics. Using GW231123-like numerical-relativity injections, we find that lensing degrees of freedom can reduce waveform discrepancies and yield non-negligible lensing support. However, this behavior is not systematic across injections, and cases where all waveform and lens models favor lensing while reducing discrepancies are not found.
Authors
Disha Hegde
(UCLouvain)
Justin Janquart
(UCLouvain | Royal Observatory of Belgium)