Schumann resonance transients and the search for gravitational waves

TL;DR

This paper explores how global lightning-induced Schumann resonance transients can create correlated noise in gravitational wave detectors and proposes methods to distinguish these signals from true gravitational waves to improve detection accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to identify and suppress Schumann resonance transients based on their characteristic time lags caused by lightning hotspot distribution.

Findings

Schumann resonance transients have identifiable time lag patterns.

Time lag analysis can help differentiate between lightning-induced noise and gravitational waves.

Method improves the sensitivity of gravitational wave searches by reducing correlated background.

Abstract

Schumann resonance transients which propagate around the globe can potentially generate a correlated background in widely separated gravitational wave detectors. We show that due to the distribution of lightning hotspots around the globe these transients have characteristic time lags, and this feature can be useful to further suppress such a background, especially in searches of the stochastic gravitational-wave background. A brief review of the corresponding literature on Schumann resonances and lightnings is also given.