Localizing Acoustic Noise Sources Affecting the Sensitivity of LIGO Through Multilateration

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Abstract:: Acoustic noise coupling into gravitational-wave detectors can cause vibrations in the vacuum chambers enclosing the laser beam and mirrors. The coupling results in unwanted waveforms that can overshadow a gravitational wave. To study the effect of the noise in the gravitational-wave detector and its posterior mitigation, we need to locate the noise source. We developed a code to determine the source's position using multilateration, a localization technique based on measurement of the times of arrival (TOAs) of energy waves (radio, acoustic, seismic, etc.) having a known propagation speed. We successfully tested our code with thunder, a common phenomenon near the LIGO Livingston detector. Although difficult to achieve when multiple thunderclaps happen simultaneously, we determined that our method can be used to find other nearby noise sources at LIGO.

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LIGO Document T2000618-v1