Gravitational wave detectors are already operating at interesting sensitivity levels, and they have an upgrade path that should result in secure detections by 2014. We review the physics of gravitational waves, how they interact with detectors (bars and interferometers), and how these detectors operate. We study the most likely sources of gravitational waves and review the data analysis methods...

The propagation of classical gravitational waves in Bianchi Type-I universes is studied. We find that gravitational waves in Bianchi Type-I universes are not equivalent to two minimally coupled massless scalar fields as it is for the Robertson-Walker universe. Due to its tensorial nature, the gravitational wave is much more sensitive to the anisotropy of the spacetime than the scalar field is a...

We study the linearized equations describing the propagation of gravitational waves through dust. In the leading order of the WKB approximation, dust behaves as a nondispersive, non-dissipative medium. Taking advantage of these features, we explore the possibility that a gravitational wave from a distant source gets trapped by the gravitational field of a long filament of galaxies of the kind s...

The first detections of gravitational waves, GW150914 and GW151226, were associated with the coalescence of stellar mass black holes, heralding the opening of an entirely new way to observe the Universe. Many decades of development were invested to achieve the sensitivities required to observe gravitational waves, with peak strains associated with GW150914 at the level of 10−21. Gravitational w...

1 According to general relativity theory, compact concentrations of energy (e.g., neutron stars and black holes) should warp spacetime strongly, and whenever such an energy concentration changes shape, it should create a dynamically changing spacetime warpage that propagates out through the Universe at the speed of light. This propagating warpage is called gravitational radiation—a name that ar...

The spectrum of gravitational waves that have been produced in inflation is modified during cosmological transitions. Large drops in the number of relativistic particles, like in the QCD transition or at the ee-annihilation, lead to steps in the energy spectrum of gravitational waves.

General relativity predicts that binary systems of stars produce gravitational waves of significant intensity. Here we are particularly interested in the cataclysmic variable binaries (CVs). These systems emit low frequency gravitational waves, f < 10−3Hz. We present here a catalog of CVs and argue that part of them are capable of being detected by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).

We show that the (4 + 1)-dimensional vacuum Einstein equations admit gravitational waves with radial symmetry. The dynamical degrees of freedom correspond to deformations of the three-sphere orthogonal to the (t,r) plane. Gravitational collapse of such waves is studied numerically and shown to exhibit discretely self-similar type II critical behavior at the threshold of black hole formation.

Title of dissertation: IMPROVING ANALYTICAL TEMPLATES AND SEARCHING FOR GRAVITATIONAL WAVES FROM COALESCING BLACK HOLE BINARIES Evan Ochsner Doctor of Philosphy, 2010 Dissertation directed by: Professor Alessandra Buonanno Department of Physics The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo are taking data at design sensitivity. They will be upgraded to Advanced LIGO a...

We develop a theoretical frame for the study of classical and quantum gravitational waves based on the properties of a nonlinear ordinary differential equation for a function σ(η) of the conformal time η, called the auxiliary field equation. At the classical level, σ(η) can be expressed by means of two independent solutions of the ”master equation” to which the perturbed Einstein equations for ...