The 18 chapters represent courses at the Gravitational Waves in Astrophysics, Cosmology, and String Theory doctoral school organized the Italian Society of Relativity and Gravitation, SIGRAV, in Como, Italy during the spring of 1999. After an overview of theory and experiment, they cover sources and detectors, the stochastic gravitational-wave background, theoretical developments, and numerical relativity. Among the specific topics are waves and energy, the earth- based large interferometer Virgo and the low-frequency facility, sources of stochastic gravitational-wave background, gyroscopes, and the post-Newtonian computation of binary inspiral waveforms. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Gravitational waves (GWs) are a hot topic and promise to play a central role in astrophysics, cosmology, and theoretical physics. Technological developments have led us to the brink of their direct observation, which could become a reality in the coming years. The direct observation of GWs will open an entirely new field: GW astronomy. This is expected to bring a revolution in our knowledge of the universe by allowing the observation of previously unseen phenomena, such as the coalescence of compact objects (neutron stars and black holes), the fall of stars into supermassive black holes, stellar core collapses, big-bang relics, and the new and unexpected.
With a wide range of contributions by leading scientists in the field, Gravitational Waves covers topics such as the basics of GWs, various advanced topics, GW detectors, astrophysics of GW sources, numerical applications, and several recent theoretical developments. The material is written at a level suitable for postgraduate students entering the field.
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