Seismic attenuation system for the external injection bench of the Advanced Virgo gravitational wave detector

In November 2011 a major upgrade of the Virgo gravitational wave detector was started. After these improvements the detector's sensitivity will have increased by an order of magnitude, increasing the expected event rate by 103 compared to its predecessor. Extensive noise studies showed that this improvement can only be accomplished if a number of optical benches, hosting ancillary optics and optical sensors for the alignment of the interferometer, are isolated from seismic ground motion to reduce the amount of beam jitter and control noise they introduce. Here we present the first of these systems: the External Injection Bench Seismic Attenuation System, or EIB-SAS, which is able to reduce seismically induced motion of the external injection bench (last bench before laser beam enters the vacuum system) by more than 40 dB above 10 Hz in 6 degrees of freedom