TAMA-300 PROJECT FOR GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DETECTOR

This paper reports on the outline and the status of the TAMA-300 project, the 300 meter laser interferometer gravitational wave detector developed by a team of scientists of several research institutes and universities in Japan. In fact the project has been funded and its construction started at the National Astronomical Observatory, Mitaka, in spring 1995. And the constructions of the tunnels for the east-west and north-south arms and of the central building are completed and a half of pipes for laser beams were brought in. Very stable laser oscillator has been almost completed and mew techniques such as vibration isolations, recycling of laser power, and suspension of mirrors by double pendulums have been developed. In fact the purposes of the project are to establish techniques necessary for future km-class detectors and to operate the detector to catch possible gravitational wave events in nearby galaxies such as Andromeda, the target sensitivity being $3 {\times} 10^{-21}$ at 300Hz.