GRAVITATIONAL WAVES NAPOLI RESEARCH GROUP

The Laboratory is active in the gravitational wave research since many years. Members of the lab are among the initial proponents of the Virgo project and also a long collaboration has been established with the Lisa project for the detection of the gravitational wave with space interferometers.

Within the Virgo project, during the years the laboratory activities have been focused on the Optical Characterization of the interferometer, noise reduction, definition of the working point both in longitudinal and angular degrees of freedom, data acquisition environmental monitoring, local controls implementations, data analysis  with  particular  focus  on  coalescing  binary systems.

Members of the group have been appointed in various responsibility rules, like Data Analysis coordinator, Electronic Responsible (for the Virgo Advanced Detector), Commissioning coordinator, Interferometric Sensor and Control coordinator (for the Virgo Advanced Detector) and others.

Presently the detector is under the up-grade that will lead the detector in its advanced version, so called Adv-Virgo. The group of Naples is responsible for the Simulation and Definition of the longitudinal control system, for the implementation of the local controls, the environmental noise measurements and data acquisition. The works have been published in more than 200 Virgo-Ligo group publications.

Within the space antennas, called Lisa and eLisa, the activities have been mainly focused on the realization of an alternative optical read-out system for the control of the test mass motion with respect to the surrounding satellite. The system, named ORO (optical read-out) has been proven to be extremely sensitive and it is now under consideration for the installation on the future satellite.  The group is active in the realization of a new generation torsion pendulum facility, named PETER, for the measurement of small residual noise forces that could spoil the sensitivity if not cured.