Welcome to the 10th International LISA Symposium

Ground based gravitational wave detectors are entering a new era with installation of the Advanced LIGO detectors at Hanford, WA and Livingston, LA. Both sites are currently working on integrated tests of sections of the interferometer, with rapid progress towards operating both interferometers by the end of this year. Once the full interferometers are operational, work on the low frequency sensitivity should bring the instruments to sensitivities significantly better than previous gravitational wave detectors. A short (approximately 3 month) observing run will start once the instruments have reached sensitivities of 40-80 Mpc (hopefully by late 2015). Further commissioning of the instruments alternating with data collection runs will be scheduled to allow for the earliest possible detection o gravitational waves.

The Advanced Virgo interferometer is the upgraded version of the Virgo detector having the goal to improve by a factor 10 the sensitivity of its predecessor. Its installation has started on the Cascina (Pisa) site and it is expected to be completed at the beginning of 2015. In this talk we will present the scheme, the expected sensitivity and the scientific potential of this new detector. Then we will give a description of its several subsystems and of their challenging technical features. Finally we shall deal with the installation status and the foreseen time schedule which will bring Advanced Virgo to its full operation

The German-British laser interferometer gravitational-wave detector, GEO600, has served as the sole interferometric GW detector in operation since Sep. 2011. In parallel to its data-taking mode, GEO600 is implementing a series of upgrades that improve its strain sensitivity at frequencies above 500 Hz. Called GEO-HF, this program involves a combination of demonstrating advanced detector technology such as a permanent application of squeezing and developing solutions to the technical challenges of increasing the laser power at the beam splitter from about 2 kW to 20 kW. We present the latest commissioning progress, highlighting the results of new servos to control the squeezer phase and alignment in the interferometer and the design and use of new thermal compensation systems to reduce the power of higher order modes at the anti-symmetric port.

We report on the current status of KAGRA, the large-scale cryogenic gravitational-wave telescope in Japan. KAGRA is an interferometric detector now under construction in the Kamioka mine at Gifu prefecture, having 3-km long arms. In the end of this March, a tunnel excavation for this telescope has finished. The seismic noise in the Kamioka mine is several hundredth lower than that on the ground, and the main mirrors for the intereferometer will be cooled down to around 20 K for the reduction of thermal noises. In the initial phase, the configuration will be a Fabry-Perot Michelson, and we will perform an observation run in 2015. Some recycling mirrors will be installed after that, so the scientific observation runs are planed after 2017.