The Mario Schenberg Gravitational Wave Antenna

This article is an account of the work done in the Mario Schenberg gravitational wave antenna up to date, focusing mainly in the participation of the Laboratório de Estado Sólido e Baixas Temperaturas (LESBT) do Instituto de Física da Universidade de S. Paulo. The text starts with an introduction describing the problem, the Brazilian project, and the participant institutions. This is followed by a description of the construction of the infrastructure, initial tests, and final basic assembly at the LESBT. Results are presented for the thermal and mechanical behaviors of the cryogenic system and for the development of active transducers in its various stages, culminating with the last version in which the project sensitivity of ∼4 × 10−20 Hz−1/2 was attained.