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We have measured the mechanical loss of a dielectric multilayer reflective coating (ion-beam sputtered SiO2 and Ta2O5) in cooled mirrors. The loss was nearly independent of the temperature (4 K ∼ 300 K), frequency, optical loss, and stress caused by the coating, and the details of the manufacturing processes. The loss angle was (4 ∼ 6) × 10 −4 . The temperature independence of this loss implies that the amplitude of the coating thermal noise, which is a severe limit in any precise measurement, is proportional to the square root of the temperature. Sapphire mirrors at 20 K satisfy the requirement concerning the thermal noise of even future interferometric gravitational wave detector projects on the ground, for example, LCGT.

The large-scale cryogenic gravitational wave telescope (LCGT) is the future project of the Japanese gravitational wave group. Two sets of 3 km arm length laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors will be built in a tunnel of Kamioka mine in Japan. LCGT will detect chirp waves from binary neutron star coalescence at 240 Mpc away with a S/N of 10. The expected number of detectable events in a year is two or three. To achieve the required sensitivity, several advanced techniques will be employed such as a low-frequency vibration-isolation system, a suspension point interferometer, cryogenic mirrors, a resonant side band extraction method, a high-power laser

The CLIO project involves the Cryogenic Laser Interferometer Observatory (CLIO) detector complex for gravitational wave detection and the Kamioka Laser Interferometric Strainmeter for the acquisition of geophysical data. CLIO has been constructed to demonstrate the feasibility of a future project, the Large-scale Cryogenic Gravitational wave Telescope (LCGT). It will utilize the low seismic and stable environment of the Kamioka mine as well as sapphire mirrors and suspension fibres at low temperature to reduce thermal noise. We designed CLIO to have a noise level limited by the thermal noise of sapphire mirrors and sapphire suspension fibres, which vary from 3 × 10−19 m Hz−1/2 at 300 K to 2 × 10−20 m Hz−1/2 at 20 K around 100 Hz. The strainmeter has already succeeded in monitoring the Earth's tidal motion with a strain sensitivity of 2 × 10−12. The seismic noise veto between these same-scale interferometers is expected to provide an effective means of data selection for the gravitational wave signal analysis, and the ground motion data obtained by the strainmeter will help to maintain the stable operation of CLIO.

We search for coincident gravitational wave signals from inspiralling neutron star binaries using LIGO and TAMA300 data taken during early 2003. Using a simple trigger exchange method, we perform an intercollaboration coincidence search during times when TAMA300 and only one of the LIGO sites were operational. We find no evidence of any gravitational wave signals. We place an observational upper limit on the rate of binary neutron star coalescence with component masses between 1 and 3M[sun] of 49 per year per Milky Way equivalent galaxy at a 90% confidence level. The methods developed during this search will find application in future network inspiral analyses