Developing the optical technologies needed for the future Einstein Telescope gravitational wave detector: this is the goal of the AiLoV-ET laboratory, inaugurated in the laboratories of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics Section of the Physics Department of the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

The new infrastructure was born from the collaboration between the INFN and the University of Rome Tor Vergata as part of the ETIC project , funded by the Ministry of University and Research with funds from the PNRR, to promote Sardinia's Italian candidacy to host the Einstein Telescope through the creation of a national network of laboratories spread across the territory.

Funded with approximately three million euros, the AiLoV-ET (Advanced Optics Lab @ Tor Vergata for Einstein Telescope) laboratory includes "clean and gray rooms, i.e. the controlled contamination environments typical of an instrumental physics research laboratory, optical benches, lasers, mirrors and highly technological instrumentation ," said Viviana Fafone, head of the laboratory, professor at the University of Tor Vergata and researcher at the INFN.

«AiLoV-ET is therefore in all respects a research centre of international importance , focused on the creation of technological solutions in adaptive optics and new materials for the detector mirrors , key elements for the scientific objectives of the Einstein Telescope», added Fafone.

For the rector of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Nathan Levialdi Ghiron, the laboratory is "a concrete example of how collaboration between institutions, supported by a strategic national and European vision, can generate cutting-edge research and technological innovation ." It is also "an investment not only in infrastructure but in people," and "a sign of confidence in science, in European collaboration, and in our country's ability to play a leading role in the great challenges of knowledge."