Gravitational Waves

Gravitational Radiation: A New Window onto the Universe - Review article by Kip Thorne (Caltech) about the basic concepts of gravitational wave physics and the prospects of gravitational wave astronomy.

Gravitational Radiation from Post-Newtonian Sources and Inspiralling Compact Binaries - Review article by Luc Blanchet, published in Living Reviews in Relativity; describes (at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level) the generation of gravitational waves by isolated systems such as orbiting neutron stars or black holes.

Gravitational Waves - Collection of articles about various aspects of gravitational wave physics, from an overview of current and planned detectors to an illustration of the three-dimensional structure of simple gravitational waves. Part of the "Spotlights on Relativity" series on Einstein Online; written for a general audience.

Gravitational Waves: An Introduction - This paper presents an elementary introduction to the theory of gravitational waves. This article is meant for students who have had an exposure to general relativity, but results from general relativity have been derived in the appendices.

Harry Collins's Gravitational Wave Project - Website about a long-running project on sociological aspects of the search for gravitational waves (Cardiff University). Includes some preprints and articles, as well as summaries of the different parts of the project.

LISA Technology - Concepts, Status, Prospects - Review article written in 2003 by Karsten Danzmann and Albrecht Rüdiger which gives an overview of the technology being developed for the planned space-borne gravitational wave detector LISA. [PDF]

Mission Design for LISA Pathfinder - Article by M. Landgraf, M. Hechler and S. Kemble about the design of the LISA Pathfinder mission, which is meant to test the technology needed for the planned space-based gravitational wave detector LISA.

Physics 237-2002: Gravitational Waves - Collection of materials from a graduate-student-level course on Gravitational Waves taught at the California Institute of Technology, January through May of 2002; includes Quicktime videos of the lectures, lists of suggested and supplementary reading, copies of some of the readings, and many exercises with solutions.

Spacetime Wrinkles - Online exhibition by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications about gravitational waves and the role played by computer simulations in exploring this phenomenon. Also contains basic information about general relativity and black holes.