Status of the AURIGA detector on May '05
On May 19th 2005 the second upgrade of the low frequency suspensions was finalized, while keeping the detector in data taking. AURIGA is now suspended on 4 commercial seismic isolation stages, consisting of pendula in the horizontal directions and air damper along the vertical. For all three degrees of freedom the cut off frequency is about 1Hz.
The effect of the new suspension was seen immediately: the residual disturbances still present after the first suspension upgrade of Dec 1st 2004 (typically during working day time) disappeared on a time scale of minutes, giving output spectra even better than previously during week-end night-time. The detector output spectrum is now clean from any spurious lines, irrespectively of time of day or week-end.
