Characterisation of lensing selection effects for LISA massive black hole binary mergers

Understand

We present a method to include lensing selection effects due to the finite horizon of a given detector when studying lensing of gravitational wave (GW) sources.

• When selection effects are included, the mean of the magnification distribution is shifted from one to higher values for sufficiently high-redshift sources.
• This introduces an irreducible (multiplicative) bias on the luminosity distance reconstruction, in addition to the typical source of uncertainty in the distance determination.
• We apply this method to study lensing of GWs emitted by massive black hole binary mergers at high redshift detectable by LISA.