1. 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)

2. ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader2 HOW DID WE GET HERE?

3. 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

4. THE CONSTRUCTION ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader4 VIRGO SITE INAUGURATION, 1999 CONSTRUCTION COMPLETE, 2003

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. THEY WORK! ET event - Cascina, May 20, 20118 LIGO and Virgo remarkable results Design sensitivity achieved Noise understood INTERFEROMETER TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATED Excellent duty cycle Virgo LIGO G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader

9. 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

10. 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!

11. 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

12. THE LOW FREQUENCY RANGE  First science results in this frequency range: spin-down limit for the Vela pulsar beaten (arXiv 1104.2712) ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader12

13. 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

14. 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, 201114G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader

15. PAPERS ARE BEING PUBLISHED… aa ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader15

16. ET event - Cascina, May 20, 201116 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!

17. LOOKING WIDER: MULTI-MESSENGER SCIENCE ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader17 Credit: S Marka

18. 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

19. 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 (0.1-100 ev/yr). AdV will measure it!  AdV in the network with aLIGO

20. 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…

21. 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

22. ADVANCED VIRGO  Construction started  Installation to start in fall  Detector up in 2015 ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader22

23. 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 Leader23 2016: CENTENNIAL OF GENERAL RELATIVITY We look forward to celebrating it with a discovery Preparing the field for ET…

24. ET event - Cascina, May 20, 2011G Losurdo - Advanced Virgo Project Leader24