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Gravitational Waves Group
Highlight
New Instrumented baffle installed at Virgo
April 28, 2021
The installation culminates more than two years of work at IFAE for the design and construction of a novel and innovative device to control and monitor the stray light inside the experiment, a persistent source of noise at interferometers. For the first time a Spanish Institution is making a significant hardware contribution to a worldwide leading gravitational waves experiment using ground-based interferometry.
Over 100 black holes detected by Virgo and LIGO in the first run of 2019
October 29, 2020
The classification and definitive analysis of the 39 events detected by Virgo and LIGO in the third observation period was published today on ArXiv. Most of these are black hole mergers, the characteristics of which, however, question some established astrophysical models and open up new scenarios.
Proposal to include the Einstein Telescope in the ESFRI roadmap presented
September 10, 2020
The proposal to include the Einstein Telescope, a pioneering third-generation gravitational-wave (GW) observatory, in the 2021 update of the European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) roadmap has been submitted.
Virgo and LIGO unveil new and unexpected black hole populations
September 2, 2020
Virgo and LIGO have announced the detection of an extraordinarily massive merging binary system: two black holes of 66 and 85 solar masses, which generated a final black hole of around 142 solar masses.
Virgo and LIGO spot a mystery object merging with a black hole
June 23, 2020
Virgo and LIGO have announced the discovery of a compact object of about 2.6 solar masses, placing it in a range between the heaviest neutron star and the lightest black hole ever seen.
GW190412: The merger of two black holes with unequal masses
April 12, 2020
The LIGO and Virgo Collaborations have observed gravitational waves produced by the inspiral and merger of two black holes. The signal, named GW190412, was produced by a coalescing BBH system with unequal masses, one component being more than 3 times heavier than the other one.
Virgo and LIGO join forces for a new year-long signal hunt
March 26, 2019
The Virgo and LIGO detectors are ready to start the new Observing run called O3, lasting a whole year. The hunt for gravitational waves is set to start on April 1st when the Virgo detector and the LIGO twin detectors will start to take data becoming together the most sensitive gravitational wave observatory to date
LIGO and Virgo Announce Four New Gravitational-Wave Detections
December 3, 2018
The LIGO and Virgo collaborations have now confidently detected gravitational waves from a total of 10 stellar-mass binary black hole mergers and one merger of neutron stars, which are the dense, spherical remains of stellar explosions. Six of the black hole merger events had been reported before, while four are newly announced.
IFAE joins the VIRGO collaboration
November 14, 2018
IFAE just became a new member institution inside the VIRGO collaboration. This opens a new long-term research line in IFAE related to GWs detection using terrestrial interferometry.
