On September 14th 2015 the first gravitational wave signal has been detected by the Advanced LIGO interferometers, opening the era of the gravitational astronomy and giving new opportunities to ...investigate the universe. The Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo interferometers are now back in a commissioning phase in order to improve their sensitivity for the next observing run, which will start in the first months of 2019. In the high-frequencies region of their sensitivity band, the detectors are shot-noise limited: the sensitivity in this frequency window could be improved increasing the laser input power, but this increases also the optical aberrations due to the thermal effects. The optical power absorptions in the substrate and coatings of the optics induce both an increase of the optical path length in the substrates of the mirrors (thermal lensing) and a thermal expansion of the optic itself along the optical axis (thermo-elastic deformation). Both these aberrations reduce the sensitivity of the detector, limiting its performances. In order to face and minimize them, an adaptive Thermal Compensation System is required in order to guarantee the proper operation of the interferometer. An overview of the present Thermal Compensation System system installed on Advanced Virgo, with also a focus on the possible improvements of the actual actuators for the next generation of detectors, is presented here.
In this paper we describe an improved method for the search of astrophysical bursts of low-energy neutrinos. We use the different temporal behaviour describing impulsive signal with respect to the ...flat temporal expectation for background events. We show that this approach strongly reduces the misidentification probability without decreasing the detection probability. In other words, this method allows to neutrino detectors to work at lower threshold with the same statistical confidence.
Core-Collapse Supernovae, failed supernovae and quark novae are expected to release an energy of few 1053 ergs through MeV neutrinos and a network of detectors is operative to look online for these ...events. However, when the source distance increases and/or the average energy of emitted neutrinos decreases, the signal statistics drops and the identification of these low statistic astrophysical bursts could be challenging. In a standard search, neutrino detectors characterise the observed clusters of events with a parameter called multiplicity, i.e. the number of collected events in a fixed time-window. We discuss a new parameter called ξ (=multiplicity/duration of the cluster) in order to add the information on the temporal behaviour of the expected signal with respect to background. By adding this parameter to the multiplicity we optimise the search of astrophysical bursts and we increase their detection horizon. Moreover, the use of the ξ can be easily implemented in an online system and can apply also to a network of detectors like SNEWS. For these reasons this work is relevant in the multi-messengers era when fast alerts with high significance are mandatory.
Thermal effects in the test masses of the gravitational waves interferometric detectors may result in a strong limitation to their operation and sensitivity. Already in initial LIGO and Virgo, these ...effects have been observed and required the installation of dedicated compensation systems. Based on CO2 laser projectors, the thermal compensators heat the peripheral of the input test masses to reduce the lensing effect. In advanced detectors, the power circulating in the interferometer will increase, thus making thermal effects more relevant. In this paper, the concept of the compensation system for Advanced Virgo is described.
The Advanced Virgo (AdV) detector is composed of different degrees of freedom (DOFs) i.e. Michelson interferometer, two Fabry-Perot arm cavities, signal recycling cavity, and power recycling cavity. ...These DOFs need to be locked to precise accuracy with robust, fast and reliable control systems. The control signals used to lock all the DOFs are mildly decoupled in frequency and the optical response of the DOFs are nonlinear, where the linear range of operation is just some percentage of the fringe for each DOF, thus posing difficulty in resonance lock at input laser wavelength for all the cavities. In particular, the control status of the arm cavities can alter the state of the detector's operational configuration. Using Auxiliary Lasers to lock the arm cavities at different wavelength offers flexible and robust lock of the detector and more spatial margin on the control signals. Second harmonic generation offers the most direct way to have laser beam with different wavelength and phase locked to the AdV input laser beam. We generated upto 97 mW of SH beam in single configuration at 532 nm using fibered amplified laser source at 1064 nm in a 10 mm long Poled Lithium Niobate crystal.
Many experiments have searched for supersymmetric WIMP dark matter, with null results. This may suggest to look for more exotic possibilities, for example compact ultra-dense quark nuggets, widely ...discussed in literature with several different names. Nuclearites are an example of candidate compact objects with atomic size cross section. After a short discussion on nuclearites, the result of a nuclearite search with the gravitational wave bar detectors Nautilus and Explorer is reported. The geometrical acceptance of the bar detectors is 19.5 m2 sr, that is smaller than that of other detectors used for similar searches. However, the detection mechanism is completely different and is more straightforward than in other detectors. The experimental limits we obtain are of interest because, for nuclearites of mass less than 10−5 g, we find a flux smaller than that one predicted considering nuclearites as dark matter candidates. Particles with gravitational only interactions (newtorites) are another example. In this case the sensitivity is quite poor and a short discussion is reported on possible improvements.
In this paper, we summarize the present state-of-the-art on the proof-of-principle experiment of frequency-dependent squeezing implemented through EPR entanglement for Virgo gravitational-wave ...detector and we introduce Virgo subsystem proposal for frequency-dependent squeezing, obtained with a compact apparatus and without the costs required by the infrastructure for the filter cavity.
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