Tag Archives: Virgo

Living Reviews in Relativity: “Prospects for Observing and Localizing Gravitational-Wave Transients with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo”

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Living Reviews in Relativity has published a new article on “Prospects for Observing and Localizing Gravitational-Wave Transients with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo” by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration on 8 February 2016.

Please find the abstract and further details below.

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PUB.NO. lrr-2016-1
B. P. Abbott et al. (The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration)
“Prospects for Observing and Localizing Gravitational-Wave Transients with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo”

ACCEPTED: 2016-01-22
PUBLISHED: 2016-02-08

FULL ARTICLE AT:
http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2016-1

ABSTRACT:
We present a possible observing scenario for the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors over the next decade, with the intention of providing information to the astronomy community to facilitate planning for multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves. We determine the expected sensitivity of the network to transient gravitational-wave signals, and study the capability of the network to determine the sky location of the source. We report our findings for gravitational-wave transients, with particular focus on gravitational-wave signals from the inspiral of binary neutron-star systems, which are considered the most promising for multi-messenger astronomy. The ability to localize the sources of the detected signals depends on the geographical distribution of the detectors and their relative sensitivity, and 90% credible regions can be as large as thousands of square degrees when only two sensitive detectors are operational. Determining the sky position of a significant fraction of detected signals to areas of 5 deg^2 to 20 deg^2 will require at least three detectors of sensitivity within a factor of ~2 of each other and with a broad frequency bandwidth. Should the third LIGO detector be relocated to India as expected, a significant fraction of gravitational-wave signals will be localized to a few square degrees by gravitational-wave observations alone.

UPCOMING ARTICLES AT:
http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/upcoming.html

2012 VESF fellowships for theoretical research on Gravitational Wave Detection

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2012 Call for VESF Fellowships for theoretical research on Gravitational Wave Detection

The Virgo EGO Scientific Forum (VESF) is glad to announce the following call for fellowship applications to work on theoretical research relevant to the physics of the Virgo experiment. Mostly contemplated topics will be: potentially detectable gravitational wave sources, emitted waveforms, rates, data analysis algorithms and strategies and any other topic of interest for Virgo.

This call is open to individual candidates (PhD holders or students) and to groups as well, that are members of VESF. Applications from individuals are encouraged.

The VESF shall fund four one-year fellowships, each at the cost of 25.000 euros. However, proposals of particular interest for Virgo and which may need two years of activity may be considered as well. VESF will not consider positions having a yearly cost higher than 25 KE, unless co-sponsorship is foreseen by the proponent.

Basic criteria to assess the applications will be:

– The relevance of the proposal with respect to the Virgo detector. In particular, a direct impact on the data analysis will be considered as an additional credit;
– Proposals for funding postdoctoral positions will be preferred although VESF will try to keep a balance; Applications must be sent electronically to: severine.perus[AT]ego-gw.it

The documents required for submitting the application are:

– the VESF application form available at: http://www.roma1.infn.it/teongrav/VESF/

– For individual applications:

* curriculum vitae of the proponent;
* two letters of reference
* a letter of endorsement by the hosting Institution, providing hospitality as well as logistic and scientific support for the proposed research activity.

VESF encourages applications from individuals with disabilities, minorities, and women. The deadline for submitting applications is June 30th 2012

First VESF School on Advanced Detectors of Gravitational Waves, Cascina, (Italy)

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June 18 – 22, 2012
Cascina, (Italy)

The Virgo EGO Scientific Forum (VESF) is launching a new program in the year when Earth-based GW detectors – Virgo and LIGO – are gearing up towards second-generation Interferometers.

The program will include topical courses focused on GW Advanced Detectors. It will offer a unique opportunity for young scientists already active or planning to work in that field, to get an in-depth training on specialized and state-of-the-art topics related to this research, like: science case, interferometer configuration, suspensions, thermal compensation, sensing and control, squeezing, lasers and more.


1st VESF School on Gravitational-Wave Data Analysis

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The Virgo EGO Scientific Forum (VESF) is glad to announce the 1st edition of the VESF School on Gravitational Waves Data Analysis, which will take place from February 10th to February 13th, 2010 at the site of EGO in Cascina (Italy).

The purpose of this VESF school is to complement the traditional VESF School on Gravitational Waves, which will take place in the Summer of 2010, providing a practical, hands-on introduction to the methodologies and techniques for data analysis.

The school welcomes young physicists and engineers; they will be introduced to the main characteristics of the data produced by interferometric detectors like Virgo, and will learn about basics of signal processing and GW data analysis. The school comprises short theoretical lessons and long training sessions, allowing the students to apply Virgo analysis software to real data with embedded test signals.

The deadline for applications is Jan. 15th, 2010 and further information can be found on the VESF website

http://www.roma1.infn.it/teongrav/VESF/

VESF fellowship for theoretical research on gravitational wave detection

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The Virgo Ego Scientific Forum (VESF) is glad to announce the call for applications for one fellowship at postdoctoral level for up to two years, to work on theoretical research relevant to the physics of the Virgo experiment: potentially detectable gravitational wave sources, emitted waveforms, rates, data analysis algorithms and strategies and any other topic of interest for Virgo.

A direct impact on data analysis will be considered as an additional credit in the evaluation of proposed researches. The present call is open to groups that are member of VESF, as well as to individuals. In this latter case, the proposed research must take place at one of the groups which are members of VESF and the application will have to contain a letter of endorsement of the hosting Institution, assuring hospitality as well as logistic and scientific support for the proposed research activity. Applications from individuals are encouraged.

The application forms and the list of eligible groups can be found on the VESF webpage: http://www.roma1.infn.it/teongrav/VESF

Applications should be sent electronically to: severine.perus_at_ego-gw.it

The deadline for submitting applications is January 10th 2010, and the selection will take place by January 30th, 2010. The position should be filled by the end of June 2010 and the extension to a second year will be subject to positive evaluation of the scientific activity by the Executive Board

VESF encourages applications from individuals with disabilities, minorities, and women.

NINJA-2 project

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The Numerical INJection Analysis project (NINJA) is a collaboration between researchers in numerical relativity and gravitational wave data-analysis. The basic idea is to embed numerically computed gravitational waveforms into noise representative of the LIGO and VIRGO detectors. The resulting data-sets are then analysed to gain insight into the properties of gravitational wave data-analysis pipelines. The first NINJA project was a great success with the final paper being published in August.

A more ambitious follow-on project, NINJA-2, is just getting underway, and everybody interested in the project is welcome to join. The kick-off telecon for this project took place on October 15, 2009. NINJA-2 aims to examine non-precessing binary black holes in realistic detector noise: Long gravitational waveforms (obtained by combining an analytical post-Newtonian inspiral waveform with a fully numerical merger simulation) are injected into realistic LIGO/Virgo detector noise; the resulting data-sets are then analysed to gain insight into properties and efficiencies of data-analysis pipelines.

The minutes of this telecon, as well as further information about NINJA-2 are posted on the NINJA-webpage http://www.ninja-project.org. Follow-on discussions of the telecon are handled via the mailing list ninja@aei.mpg.de. Please subscribe to this list at
http://lists.aei.mpg.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ninja

Postdoc Position: Optical design of the Advanced Virgo interferometer

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We open a two-year post-doc fellowship at the laboratory AstroParticule et Cosmologie (APC). The fellowship is funded by the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO).

APC (http://www.apc.univ-paris7.fr) is a new institute devoted to particle astrophysics and cosmology. It is located on the new campus of the University of Paris 7 Denis Diderot within the city limits of Paris.

The fellow will work within the Advanced Virgo optical simulation and design subsystem (head: Matteo Barsuglia) and She/He is expected to play a major role in the optical design of the Advanced Virgo interferometer (www.virgo.infn.it).

This includes the definition of the optical parameters of the interferometer and the simulations to validate the main detector design choices. The post-doc will interact with the Advanced Virgo team and also with the LIGO Scientific Community, which is developing the advanced LIGO detector in the US.

Other activities of the APC-Virgo group are: design of the mode-matching telescopes of advanced Virgo, interferometry with high-order Laguerre-Gaussian beams, searches of gravitational wave burst sources, multi-messengers analysis.

A PhD in optics or in gravitational-wave experimental physics is required.

Applications should be sent before October 15th 2009 to:
barsuglia AT apc.univ-paris7.fr