Scattered light noise at LIGO Livingston Observatory during O4
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.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{nandi2026scattered,
title = {{Scattered light noise at LIGO Livingston Observatory during O4}},
author = {Debasmita Nandi and Anamaria Effler and Siddharth Soni and Tabata Aira Ferreira and Robert Schofield and Huyen Pham and Timothy O'Hanlon and V. V. Frolov and Gabriela González},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = may,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2605.14143},
eprint = {2605.14143},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.14143},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Scattered light noise at LIGO Livingston Observatory during O4
AU - Debasmita Nandi
AU - Anamaria Effler
AU - Siddharth Soni
AU - Tabata Aira Ferreira
AU - Robert Schofield
AU - Huyen Pham
AU - Timothy O'Hanlon
AU - V. V. Frolov
AU - Gabriela González
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/05/13
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2605.14143
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.14143
AB - 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.
ER -