Wave-optics imprints of dark matter subhalos on strongly lensed gravitational waves. II. Saddle images and detectability

Abstract

Wave-optics interference in strongly lensed gravitational waves is a new interferometric probe of dark matter substructure: a subhalo population threading a galaxy-scale lens imprints frequency-dependent distortions on the amplification factor of each macro image. In a companion paper (arXiv:2603.04267), we computed these imprints for the magnified minimum image. Here, we extend the calculation to the saddle-point image and we assess the detectability of the combined signal with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Evaluating the amplification factor at a saddle is numerically delicate, because the equal-arrival-time contours are open and the subhalo signal is a small difference of large terms; we present a time-domain method that resolves it. Across a Monte Carlo ensemble of cold dark matter subhalo realizations, subhalos induce percent-level amplitude and phase modulations in both image parities, while the mean (de)magnification splits by parity: the minimum is net magnified and the saddle net demagnified. Demodulating the macro-image interference recovers the per-image modulations, and a matched-filter analysis that projects out the lens parameters yields a combined detection above $5σ$ in $62\%$ of realizations for fiducial massive-black-hole-binary sources of total mass $\sim10^{6}\,M_\odot$ at redshift $1.5$, provided the source lies close to the lens caustic at small impact parameter $y_{\rm src}\lesssim0.1$. Folding these naive per-event significances through optimistic strong-lensing rate forecasts yields $10$-$20$ substructure detections over the LISA mission. Strongly lensed gravitational waves are thus a sensitive, complementary probe of substructure at $10^{4}$-$10^{7}\,M_\odot$ scales inaccessible to electromagnetic observations.