LONG BASE - LINE GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DETECTORS – STATUS AND DEVELOPMENTS

Experiments aimed at searching for gravitational waves from astrophysical sources have been under development for the last 40 years, but only now are sensitivities reaching the level where there is a real possibility of detections being made within the next few years by the long baseline detectors LIGO, VIRGO, GEO 600 and TAMA 300. There are a number of limitations to performance of these detectors and to their proposed upgrades, one of the most significant being thermal noise associated with mechanical losses in the mirror coatings.