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Determine the total gravitational-wave energy of the source in the echo-for-wormhole hypothesis

Determine the total gravitational-wave energy emitted by the binary black hole merger in the alternate universe that produces the wormhole remnant in the echo-for-wormhole model for GW190521, in order to break the degeneracy between intrinsic source strength and luminosity distance encoded in the sine-Gaussian echo amplitude used for Bayesian parameter estimation.

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Background

In the proposed interpretation of GW190521 as a first gravitational-wave echo from a wormhole remnant formed by a binary black hole merger in another universe, the observed signal in our universe is modeled with a sine-Gaussian template. The template amplitude reflects both the intrinsic gravitational-wave energy emitted by the source and the source distance.

Because the total emitted gravitational-wave energy of the hypothesized source is not measured or constrained, the amplitude parameter in the Bayesian analysis cannot disentangle the intrinsic source strength from the luminosity distance. The authors introduce a reference normalization and treat the rescaled amplitude as a free parameter, highlighting the need for an independent determination of the emitted energy to resolve this degeneracy.

References

However, in our case, the total energy emitted by the source is unknown, which causes the amplitude parameter inferred from the Bayesian analysis to encode both the intrinsic strength of the source and its distance to the detector.

— Is GW190521 a gravitational wave echo of wormhole remnant from another universe? (2509.07831 - Lai et al., 9 Sep 2025) in Section 2.2 (Template of waveform)