Scattered light noise at LIGO Livingston Observatory during O4

TL;DR

This paper investigates scattered light noise in LIGO Livingston during O4, identifying two glitch populations linked to ground motion and demonstrating mitigation through baffles and seismic isolation.

Contribution

It models coupling mechanisms of scattered light glitches and shows effective noise reduction strategies implemented during O4.

Findings

High-SNR glitches correlated with microseismic ground motion along X direction.

Installation of baffles reduced high-SNR glitch rate and SNR.

Seismic isolation platform eliminated low-SNR glitches caused by vertical ground motion.

Abstract

Scattered light is one of the most common sources of noise in the LIGO gravitational wave detectors. Light scattering is a highly non-linear process through which motion at low frequencies gets up-converted and creates noise in a higher frequency band in the detector data. From the beginning of the fourth observation run, many glitches appeared in the data of LIGO Livingston detector in the frequency range 10-40 Hz, and the morphology of these glitches suggested that they were produced by scattered light. From our analysis, we identified two different populations of scattered light glitches, one group having higher SNR than the other. The glitches of the high- SNR group were solely modulated by microseismic ground motion (ground motion in 0.1-1.0 Hz) and in this paper, we present models of possible coupling mechanisms for these glitches. We also present results of a statistical correlation analysis based on our models, which indicates that the microseismic ground motion at the corner station along the X direction is the one most correlated with the noise which create these high SNR glitches. After installing baffles very close to the test mass mirrors, we have noticed a significant reduction in the rate and SNR of these glitches. The low-SNR glitches were primarily modulated by high frequency (10-30 Hz) vertical ground motion at the corner station, and this motion was coupling through a specific vacuum chamber at the corner station. After installing an additional seismic isolation platform in that vacuum chamber, these glitches have disappeared.