Results from the first burst hardware injections performed on GEO 600

GEO 600 is a 600 m arm-length, laser interferometric gravitational wave detector, located about 25 km from Hannover, Germany. Starting in November 2003, GEO 600 took part in a coincident data taking period with other detectors around the world. During this time, GEO 600 acquired three weeks of ‘science quality’ data. These data are currently being processed to search for gravitational wave signatures. One such search is that for burst gravitational waves. To investigate the performance of any burst-search codes used to analyse the data, burst-like signals were injected into the detector after the data taking run; this was done by differentially driving the end mirrors of the interferometer. In this paper, we report on how the first burst hardware injections were performed on GEO 600, the type of signals injected and the analysis of the data from the period of injections. Results from the analysis are also presented and discussed.

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