Noise parametric identification and whitening for LIGO 40-meter interferometer data

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for identifying noise power spectral density and applying whitening filters to LIGO 40-meter interferometer data, improving data quality for gravitational wave detection.

Contribution

The study demonstrates effective noise whitening using high-order filters and selective frequency band whitening for LIGO data analysis.

Findings

Successful whitening of interferometer noise data

Higher whiteness achieved by band-limited filtering

Potential for improved gravitational wave signal detection

Abstract

We report the analysis we made on data taken by Caltech 40-meter prototype interferometer to identify the noise power spectral density and to whiten the sequence of noise. We concentrate our study on data taken in November 1994, in particular we analyzed two frames of data: the 18nov94.2.frame and the 19nov94.2.frame. We show that it is possible to whiten these data, to a good degree of whiteness, using a high order whitening filter. Moreover we can choose to whiten only restricted band of frequencies around the region we are interested in, obtaining a higher level of whiteness.