Extracting Gravitational Waves from Noisy Data Using a Maximum Entropy Method Approach

Document #:

LIGO-P1500141-v1

Document type:

P - Publications

Abstract:

Gravitational waves are virtually undetectable ripples in the fabric of space and time. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration aims to achieve the first direct detection of these waves with the LIGO detectors. LIGO has been updated to Advanced LIGO, which is about ten times more sensitive than before. To prepare for this next generation in gravitational wave detection, we test methods for extracting gravitational wave signals and their parameters from noisy data. We test the MaxEnt method’s extraction ability by injecting fake signals into artificially constructed noise and extracting a signal. We then estimate the extracted signal’s parameters and evaluate MaxEnt’s effectiveness by comparing estimated parameters with the originals.

Files in Document:

• PDF (LIGO-P1500141-v1.pdf, 472.8 kB)

Topics:

• GW Bursts

Authors:

• Michael McMearty

Notes and Changes:

This document is an undergraduate senior honors thesis.