The optical detection unit for Baikal-GVD neutrino telescope

The first stage of the GVD-cluster composed of five strings was deployed in April 2014. Each string consists of two sections with 12 optical modules per section. A section is the basic detection unit of the Baikal neutrino telescope. We will describe the section design, review its basic elements - optical modules, FADC readout units, slow control and calibration systems, and present selected results for section in-situ tests in Lake Baikal

Status and perspectives of the BAIKAL-GVD project

The neutrino telescope Baikal-GVD in Lake Baikal will be a research infrastructure aimed mainly at studying astrophysical neutrino fluxes. The telescope will consist of clusters of strings - functionally independent sub-arrays. The deployment of the first demonstration cluster has been started in April 2013. In 2014 the deployment of the second stage of the demonstration cluster has been performed. We describe the configuration and design of the first GVD cluster and review the current status of cluster deployment in Lake Baikal