External environmental noise influences on Virgo during O3

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how external environmental noise sources like wind and earthquakes affected Virgo's sensitivity during O3, identifying weaknesses and proposing strategies to improve robustness for future runs.

Contribution

It presents the first comprehensive correlation study between environmental conditions and Virgo's performance during O3, informing improvements for O4.

Findings

Environmental noise impacts on detector sensitivity quantified

Weaknesses in detector robustness identified

Strategies proposed for future noise mitigation

Abstract

Sources of geophysical noise, such as wind, sea waves and earthquakes, can have an impact on gravitational wave interferometers causing sensitivity worsening and gaps in data taking. During the 1-year long O3 run (April 1st 2019 to March 27th 2020), the Virgo Collaboration collected a statistically significant dataset to study the response of the detector to a variety of environmental conditions. We used these data to correlate environmental parameters to global detector performance, such as observation range, duty cycle and control losses. Where possible, we identified weaknesses in the detector and we elaborated strategies to improve Virgo robustness against external disturbances for the next run O4, planned to start in summer 2022. In this article we present preliminary results of this study.