Poissonian Analysis of Glitches Observed in the LIGO Gravitational Wave Interferometers

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the timing of glitches in LIGO data to determine if they follow a Poisson process, aiding in understanding their origins and improving mitigation strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a statistical method to assess the Poissonian nature of glitch classes in LIGO data, revealing which classes deviate from Poisson behavior.

Findings

Certain glitch classes follow Poisson distribution closely

Some classes show significant deviations, indicating non-Poissonian origins

Detector or run dependence affects glitch distribution patterns

Abstract

This work investigates the temporal distribution of glitches detected by LIGO, focusing on the morphological classification provided by the Gravity Spy project. Starting from the hypothesis that these events follow a Poisson process, we developed a statistical methodology to evaluate the agreement between the empirical distribution of glitches and an ideal Poisson model, using the coefficient of determination ($R^2$) as the main metric. The analysis was applied to real data from the LIGO detectors in Livingston and Hanford throughout the O3 run, as well as to synthetic datasets generated from pure Poisson distributions. The results show that while several morphologies exhibit good agreement with the proposed model, classes such as 1400Ripples, Fast Scattering, and Power Line display significant deviations ($R^2 \leq 0.6$), suggesting that their origins do not strictly follow Poissonian statistics. In some cases, a dependence on the detector or the observing run was also observed. This analysis provides a quantitative basis for distinguishing glitch classes based on their degree of "Poissonness", potentially supporting the development of more effective glitch mitigation strategies in gravitational wave detector data.