skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Detection of anomalies amongst LIGO’s glitch populations with autoencoders
Abstract Gravitational wave (GW) interferometers are able to detect a change in distance of ~1/10 000th the size of a proton. Such sensitivity leads to large rates of non-gaussian, transient bursts of noise, also known as glitches, which hinder the detection and parameter estimation of short- and long-lived GW signals in the main detector strain. Glitches, come in a wide range of frequency-amplitude-time morphologies and may be caused by environmental or instrumental processes, so a key step towards their mitigation is to understand their population. Current approaches for their identification use supervised models to learn their morphology in the main strain with a fixed set of classes, but do not consider relevant information provided by auxiliary channels that monitor the state of the interferometers. In this work, we present an unsupervised algorithm to find anomalous glitches. Firstly, we encode a subset of auxiliary channels from Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory Livingston in the fractal dimension (FD), which measures the complexity of the signal. For this aim, we speed up the fractal dimension calculation to encode 1 h of data in 11 s. Secondly, we learn the underlying distribution of the data using an autoencoder with cyclic periodic convolutions. In this way, we learn the underlying distribution of glitches and we uncover unknown glitch morphologies, and overlaps in time between different glitches and misclassifications. This led to the discovery of 6.6 % anomalies in the input data. The results of this investigation stress the learnable structure of auxiliary channels encoded in FD and provide a flexible framework for glitch discovery.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2308693
PAR ID:
10510717
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Institute of Physics
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Classical and Quantum Gravity
Volume:
41
Issue:
5
ISSN:
0264-9381
Page Range / eLocation ID:
055004
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Abstract Environmental seismic disturbances limit the sensitivity of LIGO gravitational wave detectors. Trains near the LIGO Livingston detector produce low frequency (0.5– 10 H z ) ground noise that couples into the gravitational wave sensitive frequency band (10– 100 H z ) through light reflected in mirrors and other surfaces. We investigate the effect of trains during the Advanced LIGO third observing run, and propose a method to search for narrow band seismic frequencies responsible for contributing to increases in scattered light. Through the use of the linear regression tool Lasso (least absolute shrinkage and selection operator) and glitch correlations, we identify the most common seismic frequencies that correlate with increases in detector noise as 0.6– 0.8 H z , 1.7– 1.9 H z , 1.8– 2.0 H z , and 2.3– 2.5 H z in the LIGO Livingston corner station. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract Objective.In vivoimaging assessments of skeletal muscle structure and function allow for longitudinal quantification of tissue health. Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) non-invasively quantifies tissue mechanical properties, allowing for evaluation of skeletal muscle biomechanics in response to loading, creating a better understanding of muscle functional health.Approach. In this study, we analyze the anisotropic mechanical response of calf muscles using MRE with a transversely isotropic, nonlinear inversion algorithm (TI-NLI) to investigate the role of muscle fiber stiffening under load. We estimate anisotropic material parameters including fiber shear stiffness ( μ 1 ), substrate shear stiffness ( μ 2 ), shear anisotropy ( ϕ ), and tensile anisotropy ( ζ ) of the gastrocnemius muscle in response to both passive and active tension.Main results. In passive tension, we found a significant increase in μ 1 , ϕ , and ζ with increasing muscle length. While in active tension, we observed increasing μ 2 and decreasing ϕ and ζ during active dorsiflexion and plantarflexion—indicating less anisotropy—with greater effects when the muscles act as agonist.Significance. The study demonstrates the ability of this anisotropic MRE method to capture the multifaceted mechanical response of skeletal muscle to tissue loading from muscle lengthening and contraction. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract Surface properties are critical to the capabilities of superconducting microwave devices. The native oxide of niobium-based devices is thought to consist of a thin normal conducting layer. To improve understanding on the importance of this layer, an attempt was made to replace it with a more easily controlled gold film. A niobium sample host microwave cavity was used to measure the surface resistance in continuous wave operation at 4.0 GHz and 5.2 GHz . Sample conditions studied include temperatures ranging from 1.6 K to 4.2 K with RF magnetic fields on the sample surface ranging from 1 mT to the maximum field before the superconducting properties were lost (quench field). The nominal film thickness of the gold layer was increased from 0.1 nm to 2.0 nm in five steps to study the impact of the normal layer thickness on surface resistance on a single niobium substrate. The 0.1 nm film was found to reduce the surface resistance of the sample and to enhance the quench field. With the exception of the final step from a 1.5 nm gold film to 2.0 nm , the magnitude of the surface resistance increased substantially with gold film thickness. The nature of the surface resistance field-dependence appeared to be roughly independent from the gold layer thickness. This initial study provides new perspectives and suggests avenues for optimizing and designing surfaces for resonant cavities in particle accelerators and quantum information applications. 
    more » « less
  4. Abstract The stratospheric influence on summertime high surface ozone ( O 3 ) events is examined using a twenty-year simulation from the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model. We find that O 3 transported from the stratosphere makes a significant contribution to the surface O 3 variability where background surface O 3 exceeds the 95thpercentile, especially over western U.S. Maximum covariance analysis is applied to O 3 anomalies paired with stratospheric O 3 tracer anomalies to identify the stratospheric intrusion and the underlying dynamical mechanism. The first leading mode corresponds to deep stratospheric intrusions in the western and northern tier of the U.S., and intensified northeasterlies in the mid-to-lower troposphere along the west coast, which also facilitate the transport to the eastern Pacific Ocean. The second leading mode corresponds to deep intrusions over the Intermountain Regions. Both modes are associated with eastward propagating baroclinic systems, which are amplified near the end of the North Pacific storm tracks, leading to strong descents over the western U.S. 
    more » « less
  5. Abstract This paper considers the Westervelt equation, one of the most widely used models in nonlinear acoustics, and seeks to recover two spatially-dependent parameters of physical importance from time-trace boundary measurements. Specifically, these are the nonlinearity parameter κ ( x ) often referred to as B / A in the acoustics literature and the wave speed c 0 ( x ) . The determination of the spatial change in these quantities can be used as a means of imaging. We consider identifiability from one or two boundary measurements as relevant in these applications. For a reformulation of the problem in terms of the squared slowness s = 1 / c 0 2 and the combined coefficient η = κ c 0 2 we devise a frozen Newton method and prove its convergence. The effectiveness (and limitations) of this iterative scheme are demonstrated by numerical examples. 
    more » « less