# VIRGO R&D

Collaboration:

- Firenze, Napoli, Perugia, Pisa, Roma1, Urbino(Firenze)

Laboratory: Collaboration sites

National Responsible: F. Vetrano (Urbino/Fi)

1. Goal of the experiment

Virgo R&D is an experiment constituted by many sub-projects aiming at insuring that projected sensitivity of Virgo detector (the gravitational antenna which has been built in Cascina, near Pisa) will be reached and preserved, or else to improve Virgo sensitivity by reducing the noise. From this point of view, Virgo R&D is presently the most powerful effort to improve the performances of ground-based interferometric gravitational detectors at short- and medium –time.

More on the activity..

2.

Activities during 2001

- UVVV developed laboratory full tests; an unluckily failure of the laser stopped the implementation of the system on a module in Cascina: this will happen during 2002.
- LFF has been completed for both mechanical and optical component. Debugging of the system is ending; physics data acquisition and analysis with the facility under vacuum is now starting.
- LDSW reached projected results, for both fused silica performances and chemial bonding technique. Now the engineering tests for possible implementation in Virgo are under study.

All other cited R&D activities have been projected for starting from next year (2003).

Milestones 2002

Data taking and PSD for thermal noise of the LFF tower | 30-06-2002
Completion of the hardware structure for monocristalline suspension | 31-07-2002
Set up on Cascina of the UVVV technique | 31-07-2002

3 – INFN contribution to the experiment in terms of manpower

Manpower: 5 researchers (1.8 FTE), 4 technologists (1.3 FTE), 2 technicians (0.7 FTE)

4 - Number of publications in refereed journals: 3

5 – Conferences talks: 3

6 – Number of undergraduate and doctoral theses on the experiment: 6

7 – Leadership role in the experiment

Spokesperson of the Virgo R&D Collaboration is Flavio Vetrano from Urbino University & Florence INFN Section. For each sub-project there are corresponding leading persons: A. Di Virgilio from Pisa for LFF; L. Gammaitoni from Perugia for LDSW; M. Tonelli from Pisa for Crystal; F. Strumia from Pisa for UVVV; F. Ricci from Roma1 for GRID; F. Barone from Napoli for ElPu e AOC.

8 – Innovative instruments

- Linear position-transducer of very high sensitivity (LVDT);
- Linear and angular accelerometers with large band and high sensitivity

9 – Competing experiments

For LFF: TNI (Thermal Noise Interferometer) in Caltech