Robust Gravitational Wave Analysis at the Catalog Scale

Author: Udall, Rhiannon Pollard

Year: 2025

Degree: Dissertation (Ph.D.)

Advisor: Weinstein, Alan Jay

Committee Members: Chatziioannou, Katerina; Reitze, David H.; McCuller, Lee P.; Hallinan, Gregg W.; Weinstein, Alan Jay

Option: Physics

Abstract

The rapid improvement in the sensitivity of ground based gravitational wave detectors has produced a huge variety of technical insights, but has also brought new challenges in gravitational wave data analysis. In this dissertation I address two of those challenges: the rapid increase in the number of detected events, and the need for robust astrophysical inferences in the presence of transient detector glitches. To manage the number of gravitational wave transients now regularly detected, I developed infrastructure for the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration which monitors and collates the results of many disparate analyses in order to produce the final transient catalog. I implemented physically informed models for scattered light glitches into standard parameter estimation tools, and so that the potential realizations of these glitches can be marginalized over when performing astrophysical inference. This method was used to better understand GW191109, an event from the third observing run with potentially dynamical formation history. These tools were also applied to better understand the behavior of parameter estimation in the presence of glitches, and to search for statistical tests which can identify if parameter estimation is biased by the presence of a glitch.

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