Control strategy to limit duty cycle impact of earthquakes on the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors

TL;DR

This paper presents a control strategy leveraging earthquake early-warning systems to reduce LIGO gravitational-wave detectors' downtime caused by seismic events, enhancing their operational resilience.

Contribution

It introduces a novel control approach that uses earthquake predictions to limit the duty cycle impact on LIGO detectors, improving their uptime during seismic disturbances.

Findings

Downtime reduced by 30% using the control strategy

Implementation plan for earthquake configuration in LIGO automation

Enhanced seismic resilience of gravitational-wave detectors

Abstract

Advanced gravitational-wave detectors such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories (LIGO) require an unprecedented level of isolation from the ground. When in operation, they are expected to observe changes in the space-time continuum of less than one thousandth of the diameter of a proton. Strong teleseismic events like earthquakes disrupt the proper functioning of the detectors, and result in a loss of data until the detectors can be returned to their operating states. An earthquake early-warning system, as well as a prediction model have been developed to help understand the impact of earthquakes on LIGO. This paper describes a control strategy to use this early-warning system to reduce the LIGO downtime by 30%. It also presents a plan to implement this new earthquake configuration in the LIGO automation system.