Simulating Transient Noise Bursts in LIGO with gengli

TL;DR

This paper introduces gengli, an open-source GAN-based tool for simulating blip glitches in LIGO data, aiding in the testing and validation of gravitational-wave detection pipelines.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel GAN model for realistic glitch simulation and provides an accessible software package for the gravitational-wave research community.

Findings

Successfully generated realistic blip glitches

Enhanced testing capabilities for GW detection pipelines

Open-source implementation available for researchers

Abstract

In the field of gravitational-wave (GW) interferometers, the most severe limitation to the detection of transient signals from astrophysical sources comes from transient noise artefacts, known as glitches, that happens at a rate around $1$ per minute. Because glitches reduce the amount of scientific data available, there is a need for better modelling and inclusion of glitches in large-scale studies, such as stress testing the search pipelines and increasing the confidence of detection. In this work, we employ a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to produce a particular class of glitches ({\it blip}) in the time domain. We share the trained network through a user-friendly open-source software package called \texttt{gengli} and provide practical examples of its usage.