Virgo is the French-Italian interferometric gravitational wave detector located near Pisa, Italy. Virgo has undergone a several year upgrade period to the second generation, and has come online recently as Advanced Virgo for participating in a common observation run with the American LIGO detectors. After its first successful observation of gravitational waves, the detector is now undergoing further commissioning and upgrades for preparing it for a longer common observation run scheduled for next year with improved sensitivity.

This paper explains the setup of the Virgo detector and the main technical choices, leading to the Advanced Virgo upgrade program for enhancing the sensitivity. The status of the detector and the ongoing upgrades for achieving the second-generation design sensitivity are presented, together with the mid-term plans for going beyond the limits of the Advanced Virgo configuration while retaining the current infrastructure.

© (2018) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Henrich Heitmann, "Status of the Advanced Virgo gravitational wave detector," Proc. SPIE 10700, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes VII, 1070017 (Presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation: June 13, 2018; Published: 9 July 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2312572.