The 10 meter prototype facility at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, AEI) will host an ultra-low noise 10 meter interferometer and serve as a test bed for new gravitational-wave detector technology. It is being constructed as a combined effort of the AEI, the Institute for Gravitational Physics at the Leibniz University Hannover, and the Cluster of Excellence QuantumFrontiers.

As a prototyping facility, its primary objectives are to develop, test and evaluate techniques and technologies to improve the performance of both current and future gravitational-wave detectors, and to train the next generation of scientists. The prototype plays a vital role in bridging the gap between proof-of-principle tabletop experiments and their implementation in full-scale gravitational-wave detectors.

Image: “View into the 10 meter prototype’s central vacuum tank.”; Source: Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute).