Deep Multi-view Models for Glitch Classification

Non-cosmic, non-Gaussian disturbances known as "glitches", show up in gravitational-wave data of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or aLIGO. In this paper, we propose a deep multi-view convolutional neural network to classify glitches automatically. The primary purpose of classifying glitches is to understand their characteristics and origin, which facilitates their removal from the data or from the detector entirely. We visualize glitches as spectrograms and leverage the state-of-the-art image classification techniques in our model. The suggested classifier is a multi-view deep neural network that exploits four different views for classification. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model improves the overall accuracy of the classification compared to traditional single view algorithms.Comment: Accepted to the 42nd IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP'17

Gravity Spy: Integrating Advanced LIGO Detector Characterization, Machine Learning, and Citizen Science

(abridged for arXiv) With the first direct detection of gravitational waves, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has initiated a new field of astronomy by providing an alternate means of sensing the universe. The extreme sensitivity required to make such detections is achieved through exquisite isolation of all sensitive components of LIGO from non-gravitational-wave disturbances. Nonetheless, LIGO is still susceptible to a variety of instrumental and environmental sources of noise that contaminate the data. Of particular concern are noise features known as glitches, which are transient and non-Gaussian in their nature, and occur at a high enough rate so that accidental coincidence between the two LIGO detectors is non-negligible. In this paper we describe an innovative project that combines crowdsourcing with machine learning to aid in the challenging task of categorizing all of the glitches recorded by the LIGO detectors. Through the Zooniverse platform, we engage and recruit volunteers from the public to categorize images of glitches into pre-identified morphological classes and to discover new classes that appear as the detectors evolve. In addition, machine learning algorithms are used to categorize images after being trained on human-classified examples of the morphological classes. Leveraging the strengths of both classification methods, we create a combined method with the aim of improving the efficiency and accuracy of each individual classifier. The resulting classification and characterization should help LIGO scientists to identify causes of glitches and subsequently eliminate them from the data or the detector entirely, thereby improving the rate and accuracy of gravitational-wave observations. We demonstrate these methods using a small subset of data from LIGO's first observing run.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl