A Catalog of Dark Matter Spike Distributions: Effect on Gravitational Waves and their Detectability

Dark matter (DM) spikes are regions of over-density in the distribution of galactic DM halos, created by the growth of a central black hole inside of a DM cloud. The presence of such over-densities may affect the gravitational waveform from a binary system by changing the gravitational potential, and through dynamical friction effects. These effects can be used to probe the DM properties gravitationally, independently from proposed electromagnetic signals from DM self-annihilation. We numerically calculate DM spike distributions for Hernquist and NFW profiles following the prescription in Sadeghian et al. [Phys.Rev.D 88, 063522 (2013)] for a Schwarzschild background. We then use these DM profiles to calculate the gravitational waveform in the stationary phase approximation. We compare the DM induced dephasing to post-Newtonian corrections, and discuss implications for the detectability of signals from DM spikes. A main result of this work is a catalog of DM spikes and their GW effects, which will aid in parameter estimation of DM properties from GW measurements.