On Monday, September 15, the Director General of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), Attilio Sequi, visited the construction site of the international CAOS laboratory (Center for applications in gravitational waves and seismology) at the University of Perugia. Started in March 2024, the construction work is now complete and the facility is expected to be delivered by the end of 2025, with the inauguration scheduled for spring 2026.
As part of the Einstein Telescope (ET) project, the laboratory will play a strategic role as an international research and development center for suspension technologies and control systems. CAOS will host the first ten-meter-scale prototype of one of the arms of the future third-generation gravitational wave detector.
The new laboratory is being developed thanks to the collaboration between the Department of Physics and Geology of the University and the Perugia section of INFN, and is co-funded by the NRRP ETIC (Einstein Telescope Infrastructure Consortium) project under Mission 4, coordinated by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR).
Rendering of the CAOS laboratory.