VIRGO: WHERE WE COME FROM WHERE WE ARE GOING GIOVANNI LOSURDO - INFN Firenze Advanced Virgo Project Leader for the Virgo Collaboration (and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration)
ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader2 HOW DID WE GET HERE?
THE BEGINNING aaa ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader3 VIRGO FIRST PROPOSAL, 1989 Started as CNRS/INFN project EGO Consortium funded to manage the site More countries joined later: Holland, Poland Hungary
THE CONSTRUCTION ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader4 VIRGO SITE INAUGURATION, 1999 CONSTRUCTION COMPLETE, 2003
A LONG COMMISSIONING Learn to operate controls Learn to cope with the increasing complexity of the optical configuration ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader5 Learn to cope with thermal effects Identify unknown sources of noise Fix detector bugs
A LONG COMMISSIONING This was made possible by the commissioning teams, their passion, smartness, frustration, enthusiasm… …and many sleepless nights in the control room ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader6
EXCHANGING EXPERIENCES ILIAS-GWA: networking program funded in FP6 Great occasion to put together the European GW community Working Group 1 dedicated to commissioning issues Virgo and GEO commissioning team working together and exchanging their experience with detector issues and noise hunting: very fruitful! ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader7
THEY WORK! ET event - Cascina, May 20, LIGO and Virgo remarkable results Design sensitivity achieved Noise understood INTERFEROMETER TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATED Excellent duty cycle Virgo LIGO G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader
SCIENCE DATA COLLECTED ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader9 VSR1VSR2VSR3 May 2011 Virgo Virgo+ Virgo+ Virgo+ with monolithic suspensions Thermal Compensation System Laser power 8 17 W Damp diffused light Increase arm finesse 50 150 Monolithic suspensions Correction of mirrors curvature + Noise hunting credit: R Gouaty
PREPARING THE FUTURE aa ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader10 Reduction of thermal dissipation: from steel to monolithic fused silica suspensions (pioneered at GEO600) 4 arm-cavity mirrors installed in the spring 2010 No robustness or control problems experienced with monolithic suspensions. Basically ready for Advanced Virgo!
THE LOW FREQUENCY RANGE Since the beginning, Virgo was conceived as a detector capable of exploring the “low frequency range” (down to 10 Hz) This was made possible by the Superattenuator, super- performing vibration isolator and control platform for the Virgo mirrors ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader11
THE LOW FREQUENCY RANGE First science results in this frequency range: spin-down limit for the Vela pulsar beaten (arXiv ) ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader12
WW…GW ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader13 MoU for full data exchange and joint data analysis Common science run in progress
GW NETWORK Event reconstruction – Source location in the sky – Reconstruction of polarization components – Reconstruction of amplitude at source and determination of source distance (BNS) Detection probability increase Detection confidence increase Larger uptime Better sky coverage ET event - Cascina, May 20, G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader
PAPERS ARE BEING PUBLISHED… aa ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader15
ET event - Cascina, May 20, NO DETECTION SO FAR PAPERS BEING PUBLISHED BUT… G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader despite the fact the the detectors are working at design sensitivity!
LOOKING WIDER: MULTI-MESSENGER SCIENCE ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader17 Credit: S Marka
TWO APPROACHES ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader18 “LOOC-UP” STRATEGY GW data telescopes, satellites or other detectors trigger, information “ExtTrig” STRATEGY
LOOKING FARTHER: ADVANCED DETECTORS ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader19 Sensitivity improvement: ≈ 10x – Detection rate: ~1000x better than Virgo/LIGO – 1 day of AdV data >> 1 yrs of Virgo data Expected detection rates: – Neutron stars: ~several ev/yr – Black holes: strongly model dependent ( ev/yr). AdV will measure it! AdV in the network with aLIGO
ONE STEP FORWARD In the recent years Virgo has gone through an impressive improvement in sensitivity and reliability Now ready for a further step: gain what is missing for the discovery and the start of a GW astronomy ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader20 GREAT SCIENCE EXPECTED IN THIS GAP…
ADVANCED VIRGO Funded by CNRS/INFN, with a contribution by NIKHEF Project formally approved in Dec 2009 Funded by CNRS/INFN, with a contribution by NIKHEF Project formally approved in Dec 2009 ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader21
ADVANCED VIRGO Construction started Installation to start in fall Detector up in 2015 ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader22
CONCLUSIVE REMARKS Interferometer technology demonstrated Science results start to flow. Good hope that advanced detectors can start GW astronomy Gamma, neutrino, radio, optical, GW information are complementary to understand emission mechanisms and ultimately the physics of the sources: steps towards a multi-messenger approach are being walked LIGO/Virgo upgrades to 2 nd generation funded, construction in progress ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader : CENTENNIAL OF GENERAL RELATIVITY We look forward to celebrating it with a discovery Preparing the field for ET…
ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader24