A Glitch and the Matrix: Advances in Gravitational-Wave Glitch Mitigation and Acceleration of Pulsar Timing Analyses

Citation

Hourihane, Sophie Rose (2025) A Glitch and the Matrix: Advances in Gravitational-Wave Glitch Mitigation and Acceleration of Pulsar Timing Analyses. Dissertation (Ph.D.), California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/q6k7-hv53. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:04292025-174229134

Abstract

Since the first detection of gravitational-waves in 2015, the field of gravitational-wave astronomy has developed rapidly. Today, there are more than 300 transient gravitational-wave event candidates from stellar-mass sources and we have found evidence for a stochastic background of supermassive black-holes. In this thesis I present work addressing two significant challenges on analyzing these data. The first: mitigating transient, non-Gaussian noise in gravitational-wave detectors, or "glitches", that can bias our estimates of physical properties of compact objects. The second: introducing a faster method to analyze pulsar-timing data containing a stochastic background of supermassive black-hole sources. Gravitational-wave astronomy is a data-rich field, and is only becoming more so with upgraded detectors, additional detectors, and longer observing time; we need robust, fast, and unbiased techniques to analyze that data.

Thesis Files