The search for gravitational waves is one of the most exciting experimental challenges in physics today. Success will provide crucial empirical proof of the relativistic picture of gravitation. If astrophysical sources are abundant enough, a new window on the Universe will be opened as well.
An up-to-date overview of the whole field of gravitational wave astrophysics may be found in a review article published as part of the proceedings of the Snowmass 1994 Summer Study.[] A more leisurely review of the issues in the construction of gravitational wave interferometers is given in the Peter Saulson's book Fundamentals of Interferometric Gravitational Wave Detectors.[1]
The coming generation of interferometric gravitational wave detectors aims to directly detect gravitational waves, and to open a new branch of astronomy by studying the nature of those waves. The 4 km interferometers of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Project, located in Hanford WA and Livingston LA, will play leading roles in this worldwide effort.[2] The facilities at the two sites are now far along in their construction; within about a year scientific equipment will start to be installed. The start of the next decade will see an intensive debugging effort, followed by a two-year run of observations in 2003-4.