1 Feedback from the executive committee meeting Benno Willke GEO meeting, Glasgow October 2006

2 GEO600 – future  as GEO in its current sensitivity does not contribute much to the S5 data analysis we decided to stop S5 24/7 mode now  we support the proposal made by the commissioning group which should lead to a new decision point in March when we know more:  could excess noise Hz and above 500Hz be found and reduced  what are the prospects of further improvements in the sensitivity  how close are we to H2  can LIGO commit to run H2 in coincidence with GEO in 2008  commissioning team works full time on this  main goal of commissioning: to take data providing coverage while H1 and L1 are down (2008)

3 GEO600 – future  we do not define a sensitivity goal / best effort  we do not produce veto lists for S5 but follow the required steps to have the veto pipelines available if required  we should try to better understand the low frequency glitches and reduce them  when enhanced detectors are in science mode we take GEO down for conversion into a high frequency detector GEO-HF

4 GEO instrument-research groups  to better coordinate experimental work in GEO and, in particular, to better support the different projects (GEO600, Advanced LIGO, LSC, GEO prototypes, Advanced Virgo, ILIAS)  the GEO research groups will be subsystem base and not project based  the goal is that each groups covers all aspects of the subsystem from R&D to commissioning (including proposal writing if applicable)  we will start with the following groups  seismic isolation and suspension (Sheila)  simulations (Andreas)  optical layout (NN)  controls (NN)  detector and prototype diagnostic (NN)

5 road map  we started a roadmap discussion  GEO600 commissioning and data taking in 2008 and AdvLIGO (lasers/suspension) are the two projects with highest priority  in parallel the GEO research groups start the design work for GEO-HF, Prototype work etc. and help with EU design study proposal  group members who are part of the commissioning team invest only very limited amount of time in research groups until the detector is ready for the data-taking period in 2008 