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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc
Abstract:
"Blip glitches" are a type of short duration transient noise in LIGO data.
The cause for the majority of these is currently unknown. Short duration
transient noise creates challenges for searches of the highest mass binary
black hole systems, as standard methods of applying signal consistency, which
look for consistency in the accumulated signal-to-noise of the candidate event,
are unable to distinguish many blip glitches from short duration
gravitational-wave signals. We demonstrate a straightforward method, employed
during Advanced LIGO's second observing run, including the period of joint
observation with the Virgo observatory, to separate the majority of this
transient noise from potential gravitational-wave sources. This yields a $\sim
20\%$ improvement in the detection rate of high mass binary black hole mergers
($> 60 M_{\odot}$) for the PyCBC analysis.
