Study of the cosmic muon rate nearby the Advanced Virgo detector at the end of the O3 run
Abstract
Cosmic-ray particles have long been studied as a potential source of noise for interferometric gravitational-wave detectors. These particles, mostly muons at sea level, can interact with the detector mirrors inducing thermal effects, which, at the detector output, could be observed as transient excesses of noise, namely glitches. For the Advanced Virgo detector, the rate of these particles is monitored by a muon telescope located in the vicinity of the detector central building. We present here the correlation study of the rate of muons with the rate of glitches during a couple of weeks at the end of the third joint LIGO-Virgo observing, O3. We also present the correlation of the previous quantities with other environmental effects, showing how the latter dominate the glitch rate and can explain a significant part of its variations.