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Introduction

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Written by: Administrator
Created: 10 October 2008
Last Updated: 09 September 2020
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The Einstein Telescope (ET) is a proposed underground infrastructure to host a third-generation, gravitational-wave observatory. It builds on the success of current, second-generation laser-interferometric detectors Advanced Virgo and Advanced LIGO, whose breakthrough discoveries of merging black holes (BHs) and neutron stars over the past 5 years have ushered scientists into the new era of gravitational-wave astronomy.  The Einstein Telescope will achieve a greatly improved sensitivity by increasing the size of the interferometer from the 3km arm length of the Virgo detector to 10km, and by implementing a series of new technologies. These include a cryogenic system to cool some of the main optics to 10 – 20K, new quantum technologies to reduce the fluctuations of the light, and a set of infrastructural and active noise-mitigation measures to reduce environmental perturbations.

ET pictorial

The Einstein Telescope will make it possible, for the first time, to explore the Universe through gravitational waves along its cosmic history up to the cosmological dark ages, shedding light on open questions of fundamental physics and cosmology. It will probe the physics near black-hole horizons (from tests of general relativity to quantum gravity), help understanding the nature of dark matter (such as primordial BHs, axion clouds, dark matter accreting on compact objects), and the nature of dark energy and possible modifications of general relativity at cosmological scales. Exploiting the ET sensitivity and frequency band, the entire population of stellar and intermediate mass black holes will be accessible over the entire history of the Universe, enabling to understand their origin (stellar versus primordial), evolution, and demography. ET will observe the neutron-star inspiral phase and the onset of tidal effects with high signal-to-noise ratio providing an unprecedented insight into the interior structure of neutron stars and probing fundamental properties of matter in a completely unexplored regime (QCD at ultra-high densities and possible exotic states of matter). The excellent sensitivity extending to kilohertz frequencies will also allow us to probe details of the merger and post-merger phase. ET will operate together with a new innovative generation of electromagnetic observatories covering the band from radio to gamma rays (such as the Square Kilometer Array, the Vera Rubin Observatory, E-ELT, Athena, CTA).

ET-Universe

With a successful ESFRI proposal, the project will enter its preparatory phase, which foresees the beginning of construction in 2026 with the goal to start observations in 2035. Two candidate sites are under investigation: one in Sardinia and one in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine. Site-characterization studies are under way towards a site selection, which is expected for 2024. The evaluation of the sites must consider the feasibility of the construction and predict the impact of the local environment on the detector sensitivity and operation. The gravitational-wave community in the US is currently working on its own third-generation detector concept Cosmic Explorer (CE) towards a future global detector network with the Einstein Telescope.

News

Dear colleagues


The long journey of the Einstein Telescope (ET) has reached a crucial point: we are ready to launch the foundation of the ET Collaboration.
The ET Steering Committee has established an initial set of definitions and rules (ET Bylaws) that provide the framework for the ET Collaboration in its initial phase.

You can find the “ET bylaws” document at the link:

https://apps.et-gw.eu/tds/ql/?c=16220

The building blocks of the ET collaboration are the Research Units (RU) and the ET Steering Committee is now launching the call for proposals of new RUs in ET. The procedure to submit a proposal for a new RU in ET starts at this link, where an online form and an offline Excel file have to be filled in for each new RU proposal.

The collection of RU proposals will be permanently open, but only the proposal received within the 31st of May 2022 will be “used” to form the first Collaboration Board, which will meet during the next ET Symposium.

 

The XII ET Symposium will be in Budapest (Hungary) the 7-8 of June, 2022. The symposium is organised in a hybrid configuration, both in person and via Zoom.

As the number of participants is limited, we invite you to register as soon as possible on the Indico page: https://indico.ego-gw.it/event/411/

 

The Symposium will be a crucial step in the formation of the ET collaboration, following the procedure described above, and your participation is warmly recommended.


During the ET Symposium, the current status of the Collaboration, the exciting progress of the ET project and the scientific and technical progress in ET design will be presented; the focus will in any case be on the kick-off of the Collaboration.
We very much hope to see you in Budapest at the XII. ET Symposium.

 

              Michele & Harald on behalf of the ET steering committee

The ETIC (Einstein Telescope Infrastructure Consortium) project aims to realise a network of research infrastructures in Italy to develop the enabling technologies for the Einstein Telescope gravitational wave observatory (ET). ETIC is coordinated by the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and co-proposed by INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica), ASI (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana) and by 11 Universities distributed along all Italy . Two are the main targets of ETIC:

1) Realise a network of infrastructures, laboratories and facilities to develop the ET enabling technologies

2) Realise a preliminary engineering design of ET, performing the needed geotechnical investigations in the Sardinia candidate site

 

The first target will be accomplished realising 15 laboratories co-hosted by the INFN units and the participating universities, devoted to realise technologies in optics, coatings, photonics, electronics, precision mechanics, seismic filtering systems, interferometric facilities, computing test facilities. The second target will need the realisation of two laboratories devoted to the engineering and architectural design of ET and the launch of a relevant call for tender for the realisation of the preliminary engineering design.

A crucial point is the recruitment of an ETIC technology and research team: several young researchers and technologists (physicists, engineers, architects, geophysicists), technicians, are proposed to be recruited to collaborate in ET.

A Research Infrastructure Manager and a Scientific assistant will be recruited to support the Scientific Coordinator in the ETIC headquarter (Perugia, Italy).

Although the proposal is still under evaluation, and we expect the decision in June 2022, we are starting to collect informal expression of interests by possible candidates to the ETIC positions. Currently we are collecting these expressions of interest for the positions of Research Infrastructure Manager and for the Scientific Assistant. You can find the form here.

Participation to the M2-Tech proposal for the HORIZON-INFRA-2022-TECH-01-01 call

ET, CTAO and other ESFRI infrastructures are preparing a proposal for the HORIZON-INFRA-2022-TECH-01-01 European call. In case you are interested to participate, please, register on the form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfEBXLhqfKKn02X08WrexpeX4DU4LZFcoIeDmDJ-T_NGcO93A/viewform?usp=sf_link

ET Workshop on Site Studies and Characterisation

Nuoro, Sardina (IT), 8-11 November 2021

The Workshop on ET sites characterisation gives the possibility to summarize the status of site studies and it allows the discussion about future plans,
in order to coordinate the efforts and to share the experiences. The selection criteria are discussed and defined.

https://agenda.infn.it/event/28070/ 

The kick-off meeting of the Einstein Telescope Observational Science Board (OSB) is scheduled the 21st-22nd September 2021. It will be a fully video conference meeting.  Zoom connection coordinates will be distributed to the registered participants; participation is open.