Impact of gravitational lensing on black hole mass function inference with third-generation gravitational wave detectors

Understand

The recent rapid growth of the black hole (BH) catalog from gravitational waves (GWs), has allowed us to study the substructure of black hole mass function (BHMF) beyond the simplest Power-Law distribution.

• However, the BH masses inferred from binary BH merger events, may be systematically 'brightened' or 'dimmed' by the gravitational lensing effect.
• In this work, we investigate the impact of gravitational lensing on the BHMF inference considering the detection of the third-generation GW detector -- the Einstein Telescope (ET).
• We focus on high redshift, $z=10$, in order to obtain the upper limits of this effect.