The Brazilian gravitational wave detector Mario Schenberg: status report

Abstract

The Mario Schenberg gravitational wave detector has been constructed at its site in the Physics Institute of the University of São Paulo as programmed by the Brazilian Graviton Project, under the full support of FAPESP (the São Paulo State Foundation for Research Support). We are preparing it for a first commissioning run of the spherical antenna at 4.2 K with three parametric transducers and an initial target sensitivity of h ∼ 2 × 10−21 Hz−1/2 in a 60 Hz bandwidth around 3.2 kHz. Here we present the status of this project.