Virgo interferometer
Gravitational wave detector in Santo Stefano a Macerata, Tuscany, Italy / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Virgo interferometer is a large Michelson interferometer designed to detect the gravitational waves predicted by general relativity. It is located in Santo Stefano a Macerata, near the city of Pisa, Italy. The instrument's two arms are three kilometres long, housing its mirrors and instrumentation inside an ultra-high vacuum.
Formation | 1993 |
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Type | International scientific collaboration |
Purpose | Gravitational wave detection |
Headquarters | European Gravitational Observatory |
Location | |
Coordinates | 43.6313°N 10.5045°E / 43.6313; 10.5045 |
Region | Italy |
Fields | Basic research |
Spokesperson | Gianluca Gemme |
Affiliations | LVK (LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration) |
Budget | About ten million euros per year |
Staff | Around 850 people participate in the Virgo Collaboration |
Website | www |
Virgo is hosted by the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), a consortium founded by the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN).[1] The Virgo Collaboration operates the detector and defines the strategy and policy for its use and upgrades. It is composed of several hundreds of members across 16 different countries.[2] Other detectors similar to Virgo have the same goal of detecting gravitational waves, including the two LIGO interferometers in the United States (at the Hanford Site and in Livingston, Louisiana) and the Japanese interferometer KAGRA (in the Kamioka mine). Since 2007, the Virgo and LIGO collaborations have agreed to share and jointly analyze the data recorded by their detectors and to jointly publish their results; this agreement was joined by KAGRA in 2019.[3] Because the interferometric detectors are not directional (they survey the whole sky) and are looking for signals which are weak and infrequent, simultaneous detection of a gravitational wave by multiple instruments is crucial for improving confidence in the signal validity and deducing the location of its source.
The interferometer is named after the Virgo Cluster, a cluster of about 1,500 galaxies in the Virgo constellation, about 50 million light-years from Earth. Founded at a time when gravitational waves were only a prediction by general relativity, it has now participated in detecting multiple gravitational wave events; the detector is still being periodically improved to increase its sensitivity and scientific output.