Proceedings of the 5th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves, Tirrenia, Italy, 6-11 July 2003

Abstract

The 5th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves took place in Tirrenia, near Pisa, Italy on 6-11 July 2003. The choice to hold the conference there was made by the GWIC (Gravitational Wave International Committee) at the last Amaldi conference two years previously in Perth. The Tirrenia candidature had been put forward by the Pisa Virgo team, anticipating that the Virgo interferometer would be completed by Summer 2003. This was, in fact, the case: Virgo was inaugurated by the French and Italian ministers for research, higher education and technology 20 days after the conference. Every day, at the end of the conference sessions, transport was available to take participants to the Virgo site. It is significant that the Mayor of Cascina has accepted the proposal to name the road giving access to the Virgo site after Edoardo Amaldi.The Edoardo Amaldi Conference has been held four times previously: in Frascati, Italy (1994), at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland (1997), at CalTech, Pasadena, USA (1999) and at the University of Western Australia, Perth (2001). This conference, organized in agreement with GWIC, is now considered to be the main meeting for the gravitational wave community, hosting scientists involved in the various aspects of gravitational wave research from all over the world. The focus of this year's conference was on results from operating detectors and those being commissioned. The conference attracted more than 250 participants, not only experimentalists working with gravitational wave detectors but also numerous theorists.Since the 2001 conference in Perth, the panorama has changed quite considerably. The LIGO interferometers, in Hanford, WA and Livingston, LA, are operative and taking data, albeit not yet at the design sensitivity. They perform science runs in coincidence with the GEO interferometer (Hannover, Germany), which is also operative, as is TAMA in Japan. As mentioned previously, Virgo (Cascina, Italy) has been completed and is entering the commissioning phase. Several resonating bars are also taking data, in particular Explorer (CERN, Switzerland) and Nautilus (Frascati, Italy), operated in coincidence by the Rome group.We are used to seeing data and upper limits derived by resonating bars from all over the world, analysed together by the IGEC collaboration, and we saw more recent results at this conference. But the real novelty is that interferometers are starting to produce data and upper limits are being derived for amplitudes and event rates for various possible gravitational wave sources. Although these limits are not yet scientifically interesting, they demonstrate that analysis programs are working and ready to filter the significant data that are expected to come soon. The enormous amount of work on data analysis preparation gave rise to a very interesting and large session over and above the annual GWDAW data analysis workshops promoted by our community every year.Confidence that new detectors are coming close to significant data production has stimulated upgrades for existing detectors (Advanced LIGO) and research and development into the next generation of detectors. This was shown in the sessions on advanced techniques, noise sources and future detectors, where attention was focused on thermal noise, mirror bulk material and coatings, cryogenic mirrors and quantum noise.In the session on space detectors, the impressive progress in this field and the preparation for test flights was thoroughly described.The session on gravitational wave sources, besides reviewing accepted candidate sources in different frequency ranges, also addressed possible new sources for both space detectors and ground-based detectors. Unfortunately, the recently discovered 2.4 hour binary pulsar had not then been announced (Nature, December 2003).The success of this conference was due to the work of many people, to the support of many institutions and to the excellent scientific work contributed by the participants.We warmly thank the Local Organizing Committee and, in particular, Lucia Lilli. She did most of the preparatory work in the months before the conference and coordinated the secretarial group of Susanna Antichi (EGO), Silvia Bernardi and Claudia Tofani (INFN). Mauro Giannini and Maurizio Garzella (INFN) provided the technical help that made the conference run smoothly every day.The advice of the International Advisory Committee and, in particular, of its chairman Eugenio Coccia, was very valuable in the preparation of the scientific programme. The expert work of the session conveners was very important in stimulating interesting contributions on all subjects. We are grateful to the institutions that made this conference possible.The conference was organized byEuropean Gravitational Observatory-Cascina and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare-Sezione di Pisawith the financial support ofComune di Cascina Dipartimento di Fisica dell'Università di Pisa Dipartimento di Astronomia e Scienza dello Spazio dell'Università di Firenze Provincia di Pisa Scuola Normale Superiore-Pisaand the sponsorship ofComune di Pisa.Finally, it is a pleasure to thank Andrew Wray for managing the realization of the conference proceedings and the referees for their meticulous reviews of the articles contained in this volume.