Gravitational wave burst vetoes in the LIGO S2 and S3 data analyses

Abstract

The LIGO detectors collected about four months of data in 2003–2004 during two science runs, S2 and S3. Several environmental and auxiliary channels that monitor the instruments' physical environment and overall interferometric operation were analysed in order to establish the quality of the data as well as the presence of transients of non-astrophysical origin. This analysis allowed a better understanding of the noise character of the instruments and the establishment of correlations between transients in these channels and the one recording the gravitational wave strain. In this way, vetoes for spurious burst events were identified. We present the methodology we followed in this analysis and the results from the S2 and S3 veto analysis within the context of the search for gravitational wave bursts.