The sensitivity of aLIGO detectors is adversely affected by the presence of noise caused by light scattering. Low frequency seismic disturbances can create higher frequency scattering noise adversely impacting the frequency band in which we detect gravitational waves. In this paper, we analyze instances of a type of scattered light noise we call ``Fast Scatter" that is produced by motion at frequencies greater than 1 Hz, to locate surfaces in the detector that may be responsible for the noise. 
We model the phase noise to better understand the relationship between increases in seismic noise near the site and the resulting Fast Scatter observed. We find that mechanical damping of the Arm Cavity Baffles (ACBs) led to a significant reduction of this noise in recent data. For a similar degree of seismic motion in the 1-3 Hz range, the rate of noise transients is reduced by a factor of ~ 50.
Published May 9, 2024
| Published
Journal Article
Modeling and reduction of high frequency scatter noise at LIGO Livingston
Abstract
Copyright and License
© 2024 IOP Publishing Ltd.
Acknowledgement
This material is based upon work supported by NSF’s LIGO Laboratory which is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation and operates under Cooperative Agreement PHY-1764464. Advanced LIGO was built under grant No. PHY-0823459. The authors acknowledge support from NSF PHY-2110509. SS acknowledges support from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) under award PHY-1764464. This work uses the LIGO computing clusters and data from the Advanced LIGO detectors. This document has been assigned LIGO-number LIGO-P2300311.
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Additional details
- ISSN
- 1361-6382
- National Science Foundation
- PHY-1764464
- National Science Foundation
- PHY-0823459
- National Science Foundation
- PHY-2110509
- Caltech groups
- LIGO
- Other Numbering System Name
- LIGO Document
- Other Numbering System Identifier
- LIGO-P2300311