The present status of the VIRGO Central Interferometer

The VIRGO Central Interferometer (CITF) is a short suspended interferometer operated with the central area elements of the VIRGO detector, The main motivation behind the CITF is to allow the integration and debugging of a large part of the subsystems of VIRGO while the construction of the long arms of the antenna is being completed. This will permit a faster commissioning of the full-size antenna. In fact, almost all the main components of the CITE with the exception of the large mirrors and a few other details, are the same as those to be used for the full-size detector. In this paper the present status of the VIRGO CITF is reported

The present status of the VIRGO Central Interferometer

The VIRGO Central Interferometer (CITF) is a short suspended interferometer operated with the central area elements of the VIRGO detector, The main motivation behind the CITF is to allow the integration and debugging of a large part of the subsystems of VIRGO while the construction of the long arms of the antenna is being completed. This will permit a faster commissioning of the full-size antenna. In fact, almost all the main components of the CITE with the exception of the large mirrors and a few other details, are the same as those to be used for the full-size detector. In this paper the present status of the VIRGO CITF is reported

Last stage control and mechanical transfer function measurement of the VIRGO suspensions

The automatic control of the suspended mirrors is a major task in operating an interferometric gravitational wave antenna. To reach the extreme sensitivity required for this kind of detector, an accurate alignment and a stable locking of the interferometer on its working point are crucial. The solution of this problem is particularly complex in the case of a multistage pendulum, such as the suspension system for seismic isolation adopted in VIRGO. A precise knowledge of the suspension mechanical transfer functions (TFs) for different forces applied in the control servo-loops represents essential information to reach the goal. In this article, we describe the apparatus we developed to measure the VIRGO suspension TF and we report the results thus obtained on full-scale suspensions at the VIRGO site. Preliminary results for the implemented control system of the last suspension stage are also presented. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics

ALICE: Physics Performance Report, Volume II

ALICE is a general-purpose heavy-ion experiment designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter and the quark\u2013gluon plasma in nucleus\u2013nucleus collisions at the LHC. It currently involves more than 900 physicists and senior engineers, from both the nuclear and high-energy physics sectors, from over 90 institutions in about 30 countries. The ALICE detector is designed to cope with the highest particle multiplicities above those anticipated for Pb\u2013Pb collisions (dNch/dy up to 8000) and it will be operational at the start-up of the LHC. In addition to heavy systems, the ALICE Collaboration will study collisions of lower-mass ions, which are a means of varying the energy density, and protons (both pp and pA), which primarily provide reference data for the nucleus\u2013nucleus collisions. In addition, the pp data will allow for a number of genuine pp physics studies. The detailed design of the different detector systems has been laid down in a number of Technical Design Reports issued between mid-1998 and the end of 2004. The experiment is currently under construction and will be ready for data taking with both proton and heavy-ion beams at the start-up of the LHC. Since the comprehensive information on detector and physics performance was last published in the ALICE Technical Proposal in 1996, the detector, as well as simulation, reconstruction and analysis software have undergone significant development. The Physics Performance Report (PPR) provides an updated and comprehensive summary of the performance of the various ALICE subsystems, including updates to the Technical Design Reports, as appropriate. The PPR is divided into two volumes. Volume I, published in 2004 (CERN/LHCC 2003-049, ALICE Collaboration 2004 J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 30 1517\u20131763), contains in four chapters a short theoretical overview and an extensive reference list concerning the physics topics of interest to ALICE, the experimental conditions at the LHC, a short summary and update of the subsystem designs, and a description of the offline framework and Monte Carlo event generators. The present volume, Volume II, contains the majority of the information relevant to the physics performance in proton\u2013proton, proton\u2013nucleus, and nucleus\u2013nucleus collisions. Following an introductory overview, Chapter 5 describes the combined detector performance and the event reconstruction procedures, based on detailed simulations of the individual subsystems. Chapter 6 describes the analysis and physics reach for a representative sample of physics observables, from global event characteristics to hard processes