Searching for correlations in global environmental noise within the context of gravitational wave detection

Abstract

The high sensitivity required of interferometric gravitational wave detectors is such that environmental noise becomes a very important consideration. Local environmental noise may be partially or wholly eliminated by cross-correlating data from two widely displaced detectors; such a strategy, however, will not be immune to environmental noise that is global in nature. Thus the characterisation of global environmental noise is of vital importance to the detection of gravitational waves. In this project the author will attempt to gain some understanding of physical environment noise, in particular whether it can be global as well as local in nature, by investigating the correlation of widely displaced physical environment monitoring stations. We found that, though there were no immediately significant correlations between the detectors, the unknown physical origin of the observed correlations would certainly be worthy of further research.