3rd Korea-Japan Workshop was held in Dec 21~22 2012.
The program was here.
ET-KAGRA thermal noise workshop was held in Jena University, Germany.
The workshop report is in here
KAGRA Advisory Board Meeting was held in ICRR Kashiwa Campus. KAGRA EO members were evaluated about the progress of KAGRA, management, and got many suggestions from the Advisory Board members.
In 8th July, a workshop about KAGRA with the department of physics and engineer of Toyama University was held in the Toyama University.
In June 17th, Uchiyama-kun who is ICRR member gave a lecture on KAGRA in the GSA seminar promoted by Hida academy.
New Atotsu tunnel excavation has started. The excavation of Mozumi is also all right.
An External Review for KAGRA project was held in ICRR from 17th April to 20th. The committee chaired by Dr. Michael E. Zucker evaluated the KAGRA designs, progress, and risks of each subgroup and made some advices. We would like to make assure the success of KAGRA project with these External Review’s reports.
The director of ICRR, Pro.Kajita(KAGRA project PI) was awarded a prize of the Japan Academy of 2012.
KAGRA project PI, Pro.Kajita was awarded a prize of the Japan Academy of
2012 for “the discovery of atmospheric neutrino oscillation”.
Yuki Susa, a member of the KAGRA collaboration at Tokyo Tech,
has been chosen as the representative of master students in
the Department of Physics. Title of his master thesis is
“Optimal signal amplification by weak measurement.”
In 28th February, A Master thesis of T.Sekiguchi got an ICRR Director Award in the ICRR Master and Doctor Thesis Workshop.
His master thesis title is “Modeling and Simulation of Vibration Isolation System”.
Members of the House of Councilors, who belong to committee on education, visited in Kamioka Observatory, Super Kamiokande, XMASS and CLIO.
Thermal noise reduction in CLIO was published in Physical Review Letters.
Summary by Author T.Uchiyama.
“Thermal fluctuation, as evidenced by Brownian motion, has been a well-known phenomenon, and it remains the fundamental limitation for certain ultraprecise measurements such as interferometric gravitational wave (GW) detectors and laser frequency stabilisation using a rigid Fabry-Perot reference cavity. One promising approach for reducing such fluctuations is to use a low-mechanical-loss material at a low temperature. Here, we experimentally demonstrate for the first time a reduction in a mirror’s thermal fluctuation in a GW detector with suspended sapphire mirrors from the Cryogenic Laser Interferometer Observatory (CLIO) at 17K and 18K. The majority of previous efforts to reduce thermal fluctuations in such mirrors have focused on the use of low-loss materials at room temperature. Thus, this achievement provides a new method for overcoming the limitations by thermal fluctuations at room temperature. This cryogenic mirror technology will be used in advanced GW detectors such as KAGRA formerly called the Large-Scale Cryogenic Gravitational Wave Telescope (LCGT), the construction of which began in 2010 in Japan, and the Einstein Telescope in Europe.”
LCGT finally got new nickname “KAGRA”. KA means “Kamioka”, and GRA means Gravity and Gravitational wave.
A detail report is shown in this page.
LCGT ground breaking ceremony was held in Mozumi, Kamioka-cho, Hida-city, Gifu prefecture.
Some photos about ceremony are shown in this page.
LCGT ground breaking ceremony was written up in several newspaper.
(web page on Gifu newspaper).
Korea-Japan Workshop was held in Korea University to promote LCGT project. Collaborations in laser development, vibration isolation, quantum measurement and so on were discussed.