Data analysis methods for non-Gaussian, nonstationary and nonlinear features and their application to VIRGO

The commissioning of the VIRGO central interferometer occasioned the implementation and tests of various algorithms for the characterization of the non-Gaussianity, non-stationarity and non-linearity of the dark fringe data. This library of prototypes will serve as groundwork for the near commissioning of VIRGO (full scale). We make a summary of the activities on that subject including the description of the selected algorithms and some results obtained with the data of the engineering runs.