Status of the early construction phase of Baikal-GVD

Abstract The second-stage neutrino telescope BAIKAL-GVD in Lake Baikal will be a research infrastructure aimed mainly at studying astrophysical neutrino fluxes by recording the Cherenkov radiation of the secondary muons and showers generated in neutrino interactions. The prototyping/early construction phase of the BAIKAL-GVD project which is directed towards deployment and operation of the first demonstration cluster has been started in April 2011. An important step on realization of the GVD project was made in 2014 by the deployment of the second stage of the demonstration cluster which contains 112 OMs arranged on five strings, as well as equipment of an acoustic positioning system and instrumentation string with an array calibration and environment monitoring equipment. Deployment of the demonstration cluster will be completed in 2015.