The Virgo-PL project has been awarded funding by the MNiSW
The Ministry of Science and Higher Education has approved funding for the "Virgo-PL: Polish Participation in the Virgo Gravitational Wave Observatory" project under the "Support for Polish Research Teams' Participation in International Research Infrastructure Projects" programme.
The applicant - Polish Consortium of the Virgo Project- comprises several institutions: the Mathematical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IMPAN), the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences (CAMK PAN), the Academic Computer Centre Cyfronet, AGH University of Science and Technology, the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ), the University of Białystok (UwB), Jagiellonian University (UJ), and the University of Warsaw (UW).
The project aims to engage the Polish Consortium institutions in using and developing the Virgo gravitational wave detector. This detector is part of a global network that includes similar observatories in Europe (Virgo), the USA (LIGO), and Japan (KAGRA). The project consists of seven tasks outlined in an agreement between the Polish Consortium and the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO). These tasks include financial contributions to EGO, enhancing the sensitivity of the Virgo detector, characterizing noise in the detector, contributing to the computational network of the International Gravitational-Wave Observatory Network (IGWN), analyzing data from the global gravitational wave detector network, and promoting the results of the Virgo project.
The Mathematical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences serves as the project leader, with Prof. Andrzej Królak as the coordinator. IMPAN's responsibilities include providing financial contributions to EGO, analyzing data from Virgo, KAGRA, LIGO, and other detectors, and coordinating the project.
