The Virgo interferometer is one of the big observatories aimed at detecting gravitational waves. This paper will describe the Virgo + upgrades and the commissioning work performed between the first ...Virgo science run (VSR1) and the second Virgo science run (VSR2). Some first results of VSR2 will be discussed, which was recently started with a good duty cycle and an inspiral range for the detection of binary neutron--star inspirals of 10 Mpc. To conclude, an outlook will be given on some future upgrades of the detector.
In the Italian-French project Virgo for the interferometric detection of gravitational waves, the laser source is an ultra-stabilized high-power CW laser. This laser operates with monomode output and ...is injection locked by a low-power master oscillator. Presents a functional approach defining the laser system as well as the first experimental results obtained with injection locking of a diode-pumped Nd:YAG slab. The results show the feasibility of the injection locking technique as a way to transfer the stability of a frequency stabilized master laser to a slave laser. (Abstract uses original text)
The gravitational wave detector VIRGO aims at extending the detection band down to a few Hertz by isolating the mirrors of the interferometer from seismic noise. This result is achieved by hanging ...each mirror through an elastic suspension (Superattenuator), designed to filter mechanical vibrations in all the degrees of freedom. An experimental upper limit of the mirror residual seismic noise at a few Hertz is provided in this paper. This is lower than the thermal noise floor, expected to limit the antenna sensitivity in the low frequency range.
The data collected by a gravitational wave interferometer are inevitably affected by instrumental artefacts and environmental disturbances. In particular, for continuous gravitational wave (CW) ...studies it is important to detect narrow-band disturbances (the so-called "noise lines") during science runs, and to help scientists to identify and possibly remove or mitigate their sources. The NoEMi (Noise Frequency Event Miner) framework exploits some of the algorithms implemented for the CW search to identify, on a daily basis, the frequency lines observed in the Virgo science data and in a subset of the environmental sensors, looking for lines that match in frequency. A line tracker algorithm reconstructs the lines over time, and stores them in a database, which is made accesible via a web interface. We describe the workflow of NoEMi, providing examples of its use for the investigation of noise lines in past Virgo runs (VSR2, VSR3) and in the most recent run (VSR4).
Virgo is designed to detect gravitational waves of both astrophysical and cosmological origin in the frequency range from a few Hz to a few kHz. After the end of the first science run, partially ...overlapped with the LIGO fifth science run, the detector underwent several upgrades to improve its sensitivity. The second Virgo science run started at the beginning of July 2009 in coincidence with LIGO. A further upgrade is planned at beginning of 2010 with the installation of new suspensions for the test masses and of new mirrors. This will lead to a considerable improvement in the sensitivity and represents an intermediate step toward the development of the advanced detectors.
The Virgo gravitational wave detector is an interferometer (ITF) with 3 km arms located in Pisa, Italy. From July to October 2010, Virgo performed its third science run (VSR3) in coincidence with the ...LIGO detectors. Despite several techniques adopted to isolate the ITF from the environment, seismic noise remains an important issue for Virgo. Vibrations produced by the detector infrastructure (such as air conditioning units, water chillers/heaters, pumps) are found to affect Virgo's sensitivity, with the main coupling mechanisms being through beam jitter and scattered light processes. The Advanced Virgo design seeks to reduce ITF couplings to environmental noise by having most vibration-sensitive components suspended and in vacuum, as well as muffle and relocate loud machines. During the months of June and July in 2010, a Güralp-3TD seismometer was stationed at various locations around the Virgo site hosting major infrastructure machines. Seismic data were examined using spectral and coherence analysis with seismic probes close to the detector. The primary aim of this study was to identify noisy machines which seismically affect the ITF environment and thus require mitigation attention. Analyzed machines are located at various distances from the experimental halls, ranging from 10 to 100 m. An attempt is made to measure the attenuation of emitted noise at the ITF and correlate it with the distance from the source and with seismic attenuation models in soil.
A search for gravitational wave burst events has been performed with the Virgo C7 commissioning run data that have been acquired in September 2005 over 5 days. It focused on unmodeled short duration ...signals in the frequency range 150 Hz to 2 kHz. A search aimed at detecting the GW emission from the merger and ring-down phases of binary black hole coalescences was also carried out. An extensive understanding of the data was required to be able to handle a burst search using the output of only one detector. A 90% confidence level upper limit on the number of expected events given the Virgo C7 sensitivity curve has been derived as a function of the signal strength, for unmodeled gravitational wave searches. The sensitivity of the analysis presented is, in terms of the root sum square strain amplitude, hrss 10-20 Hz-1/2. This can be interpreted in terms of a frequentist upper limit on the rate of detectable gravitational wave bursts at the level of 1.1 events per day at a 90% confidence level. From the binary black hole search, we obtained the distance reach at 50% and 90% efficiency as a function of the total mass of the final black hole. The maximal detection distance for non-spinning high and equal mass black hole binary system obtained by this analysis in C7 data is 2.9 ± 0.1 Mpc for a detection efficiency of 50% for a binary of total mass 80 M.
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