Validating gravitational-wave detections: The Advanced LIGO hardware injection system

Document #:

LIGO-P1600285-v5

Document type:

P - Publications

Abstract:

Hardware injections are simulated gravitational-wave signals added to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory's (LIGO) data. The detectors' test masses are physically displaced by an actuator in order to simulate a gravitational wave. The simulated signal initiates a control-system response designed to mimic that of a true gravitational wave. Propagating a signal through the detector to the analyses provides an end-to-end test of LIGO's ability to observe gravitational waves. The gravitational-wave analyses used to detect and characterize signals are tested with hardware injections. By looking for discrepancies between the recovered and injected signals, we are able to characterize the performance of analyses and the coupling of subsystems to the detectors' output channel. Here we describe the LIGO hardware injection system and show the recovery of injected signals from binary black hole mergers, a stochastic gravitational-wave background, isolated pulsars, and detector characterization studies.

Files in Document:

• o1-hardware-injection.pdf (1.7 MB)

Topics:

• Detector

Authors:

• Christopher Biwer
• Joseph Betzwieser
• Ryan Fisher
• Evan Goetz
• Shivaraj Kandhasamy
• Jeffrey Kissel
• Andrew Lundgren
• Duncan Macleod
• Adam Mullavey
• Keith Riles
• Jameson Graef Rollins
• Eric Thrane
• Thomas Abbott
• Bruce Allen
• Duncan Brown
• Philip Charlton
• S. Gwynne Crowder
• Peter Fritschel
• Jonah Kanner
• Claudia Lazzaro
• Meg Millhouse
• Matthew Pitkin
• Richard Savage
• Peter Shawhan
• David Shoemaker
• Joshua Smith
• Ling Sun
• John Veitch
• Salvatore Vitale
• Alan Weinstein
• Giancarlo Cella
• Jolien Creighton
• Edward Daw
• Maxime Fays
• Erik Katsavounidis
• Jacob Lange
• Tyson Littenberg
• Ryan Lynch
• Reinhard Prix
• Reed Essick
• Richard O'Shaughnessy
• Rory Smith

Keywords:

hardware injections