Dear Open Data Workshop / IGWN community,
I would like to start a discussion on a related detector-characterization question.
I understand that gravitational-wave detectors already rely heavily on environmental monitoring — seismic, acoustic, magnetic, electromagnetic, and instrumental channels — to help identify noise sources and distinguish true astrophysical signals from glitches.
My question is this:
Could an additional layer of passive electrostatic field sensing be useful as an auxiliary environmental-monitoring channel for gravitational-wave detectors?
For example, if a small passive sensor array were placed near non-sensitive support areas, not interacting with the interferometer itself, could time-synchronized local electric-field or charge-distribution changes provide useful correlation data for glitch identification, environmental vetoes, or machine-learning-based detector characterization?
I am not suggesting this as a replacement for existing PEM systems, and I am not claiming it would detect gravitational waves directly. I am asking whether passive electrostatic/environmental-field telemetry could provide another useful “witness channel” for identifying local disturbances that may couple indirectly into detector noise.
The concept I am thinking about is similar to a passive field camera: high-impedance sensing, time-stamped environmental-field mapping, no active excitation of the detector environment, and data used only for correlation/diagnostics.
Would this type of auxiliary sensing be technically meaningful in gravitational-wave detector characterization, or would the coupling pathways likely be too weak/noisy to provide useful information?
I would appreciate any thoughts, references, or critiques from people experienced with PEM systems, glitch classification, or detector characterization.
Best regards,
Scott Edmonds