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LIGO and Virgo Join Forces In Search for Gravitational Waves (Forwarded)



 
 
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Old February 18th 07, 03:17 PM posted to sci.space.news
Andrew Yee[_1_]
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Default LIGO and Virgo Join Forces In Search for Gravitational Waves (Forwarded)

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Carlo Bradaschia
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February 13, 2007

LIGO and Virgo Join Forces In Search for Gravitational Waves

PASADENA, Calif. and CASCINA, Italy -- The Laser Interferometer
Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo interferometric
gravitational-wave detector of the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO)
near Pisa, Italy, have agreed to join in a collaborative search for
gravitational waves from sources in and far beyond our galaxy. The
collaboration will link the three LIGO detectors, which are in the United
States, and LIGO's partner, GEO600 in Germany, with the Virgo detector to
increase the likelihood of detecting the elusive phenomenon first predicted
over 90 years ago by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity,
and pinpointing the source of the signals.

LIGO is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Virgo is funded
jointly by the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and the
French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) through the EGO
Consortium, and GEO600 is funded jointly by the Max Planck Society in
Germany and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council in the
United Kingdom. Peter Saulson of Syracuse University, spokesperson for the
LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and Benoit Mours of the Laboratoire
d'Annecy-le-Vieux de Physique des Particules, spokesperson for the Virgo
Collaboration, guided the discussions that brought about this agreement. The
LIGO and Virgo collaborations have collaborated in the past on more limited
technical investigations, but this agreement is the first to involve full
data sharing.

"This is a landmark agreement," Saulson says. "The members of both
collaborations have overwhelmingly embraced this effort, recognizing that in
spite of the hard work that it will take, the best science will come from
collaboration."

LIGO, in the midst of a nearly two-year run functioning at its design
sensitivity, is operating along with GEO600, while Virgo is making rapid
progress toward its sensitivity goals. The agreement calls for data sharing
to begin when the sensitivity and duty cycle of the interferometers allow a
significant contribution to joint searches for gravitational waves. In the
meantime, the two collaborations have begun to merge some of their
data-analysis activities in anticipation.

Mours described the importance of this agreement. "Combining the data from
the collaborations is a classic example of 'the whole being more than the
sum of the parts.' The combined data will give us a much better chance of
finding the first gravitational waves, and will allow us to have greater
confidence in any detections. And, if we find something, the combined data
will provide more information about the location of the source than either
project alone could."

LIGO operates laboratories in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford,
Washington. The project was designed and is operated by the California
Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Research is carried out by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), a group
of 500 scientists at universities around the United States and in eight
foreign countries.

The LSC includes the members of GEO600, the German-British project that
operates an interferometer near Hannover, Germany. Data from the GEO600
interferometer have been used in a number of observations by the LSC, and
are expected to continue to play an important role in the global network
once Virgo joins. Bernard Schutz, representing GEO, welcomes Virgo's
participation. "With this agreement we are pioneering a closer level of
scientific cooperation between the USA and Europe. By completely pooling our
data and coordinating our operations we greatly improve the sensitivity of
all our detectors and agree to share equally in the scientific results of
our hard work. Science is the big winner from this agreement."

The Virgo Collaboration comprises 180 scientists from 13 institutions in
France, Italy, and the Netherlands.

This agreement lays the groundwork for future expansion of worldwide
collaboration. It explicitly states that new detectors are welcome to join
the international network of gravitational-wave detectors as the new
detectors become operational at a sensitivity that would benefit the
collective scientific capabilities of the network.

The LIGO, GEO600 and Virgo detectors are very similar in concept, though
many aspects of the apparatus have different detailed implementation. All
projects have L-shaped facilities with multi-kilometer-long arms (4
kilometers for LIGO, 3 kilometers for Virgo, 600 meters for GEO600) with
evacuated tubes that contain laser beams monitoring the positions of
precision mirrors using interferometry. According to Einstein's theory, the
relative distance of the mirrors along the two arms changes very slightly
when a gravitational wave passes by. The interferometers are set up in such
a way that a change in the lengths of the arms as small as one part in ten
to the 18th meters (a thousandth the diameter of an atomic nucleus) can be
detected.

The next major milestone for LIGO, Advanced LIGO, funded by the National
Science Foundation with British and German partners, is expected to start
construction in 2008. Advanced LIGO, which will utilize the infrastructure
of LIGO, will be 10 times more sensitive than the current LIGO detectors.
Virgo scientists are also planning for a comparable upgrade of their
detector (Advanced Virgo), which will be made about the same time.

Additional information about the detectors can be found at
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu
http://geo600.aei.mpg.de
http://www.virgo.infn.it
 




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