Noise in the LIGO Livingston Gravitational Wave Observatory due to Trains

Understand

Environmental seismic disturbances limit the sensitivity of LIGO gravitational wave detectors.

• Trains near the LIGO Livingston detector produce low frequency (0.5-10 Hz) ground noise that couples into the gravitational wave sensitive frequency band (10-100 Hz) through light reflected in mirrors and other surfaces.
• We investigate the effect of trains during the Advanced LIGO third observing run, and propose a method to search for narrow band seismic frequencies responsible for contributing to increases in scattered light.
• Through the use of the linear regression tool Lasso (least absolute shrinkage and selection operator) and glitch correlations, we identify the most common seismic frequencies that correlate with increases in detector noise as 0.6-0.8 Hz, 1.7-1.9 Hz, 1.8-2.0 Hz, and 2.3-2.5 Hz in the LIGO Livingston corner station.