Winter 2003
November
Signal recycling has been installed successfully in GEO600.
After some very busy weeks with more or less stepweise improvements,
dual recycling is working with a long-term
stability close to that for the power recycled Michelson. As concerns
the sensitivity we are confident that we match our goals,
so that we will participate in the third Science Run (S3): Oct 31 -
Jan 5.
December
GEO joined LIGO for the first week of S3 with moderate sensitivity. In
the following weeks the GEO team worked hard to further improve the
interferometer and to eliminate several sources of noise. They managed
to increase the peak sensitivity at 1 kHz by a factor of ten. So, toward
the end of the S3 run GEO 600 achieved a sensitivity close to that of
LIGO and joined again on Dec 30. The LIGO team used this opportunity to extend
S3 by four additional days in order to increase the overlap
period. Thus the S3 run ended on Jan 9. GEO 600 achieved a duty cycle of
98.6 %; the longest uninterrupted run lasted for 95 hours.
January
GEO 600 continued the science run until Jan 13 due to a request of the
cw search group. They do not need data that have been taken in
coincidence.
The GEO 600 team celebrated the end of the S3 run with a party:
January 13, 2004, 5:30 pm at Ruthe.
