The detection of gravitational waves in 2015 has been hailed a scientific breakthrough and one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the 21st century. Gravitational-wave physics and astronomy are emerging as a new frontier in understanding the universe.Advanced Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Detectors brings together many of the world's top experts to deliver an authoritative and in-depth treatment on current and future detectors. Volume I is devoted to the essentials of gravitational-wave detectors, presenting the physical principles behind large-scale precision interferometry, the physics of the underlying noise sources that limit interferometer sensitivity, and an explanation of the key enabling technologies that are used in the detectors. Volume II provides an in-depth look at the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo interferometers, as well as examining future interferometric detector concepts. This two-volume set will provide students and researchers the comprehensive background needed to understand gravitational-wave detectors.

The search for gravitational radiation with optical interferometers is gaining momentum worldwide. Beside the VIRGO and GEO gravitational wave observatories in Europe and the two LIGOs in the United States, which have operated successfully during the past decade, further observatories are being completed (KAGRA in Japan) or planned (ILIGO in India). The sensitivity of the current observatories, although spectacular, has not allowed direct discovery of gravitational waves. The advanced detectors (Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo) at present in the development phase will improve sensitivity by a factor of 10, probing the universe up to 200 Mpc for signal from inspiraling binary compact stars. This book covers all experimental aspects of the search for gravitational radiation with optical interferometers. Every facet of the technological development underlying the evolution of advanced interferometers is thoroughly described, from configuration to optics and coatings and from thermal compensation to suspensions and controls. All key ingredients of an advanced detector are covered, including the solutions implemented in first-generation detectors, their limitations, and how to overcome them. Each issue is addressed with special reference to the solution adopted for Advanced VIRGO but constant attention is also paid to other strategies, in particular those chosen for Advanced LIGO.

LIGO's recent discovery of gravitational waves was headline news around the world. Many people will want to understand more about what a gravitational wave is, how LIGO works, and how LIGO functions as a detector of gravitational waves.This book aims to communicate the basic logic of interferometric gravitational wave detectors to students who are new to the field. It assumes that the reader has a basic knowledge of physics, but no special familiarity with gravitational waves, with general relativity, or with the special techniques of experimental physics. All of the necessary ideas are developed in the book.The first edition was published in 1994. Since the book is aimed at explaining the physical ideas behind the design of LIGO, it stands the test of time. For the second edition, an Epilogue has been added; it brings the treatment of technical details up to date, and provides references that would allow a student to become proficient with today's designs.

This book is devoted to researchers who would like to investigate interactions among gravitational waves and matter fields beyond linear order, including the phenomena of memory effects, gravitational Faraday rotation, soft theorems, and formations of spacetime singularities due to the mutual focus of gravitational waves. Readers only require a basic understanding of general relativity to understand the materials.The book starts with an overview on the fundamentals of the Newman-Penrose formalism and a brief introduction to distribution theory, with which the author systematically develops a mathematical description of spacetimes of colliding plane waves. Then, the author presents a frame-independent definition of polarization of a plane gravitational wave in a curved spacetime, studies in detail the gravitational Faraday rotation of two plane gravitational waves, and shows that each of them can serve as a medium to the other precisely due to their nonlinear interactions. Exact solutions are also presented, which represent a variety of models including the collisions of two plane gravitational waves and the collisions of a plane gravitational wave with a dust shell, a massless scalar wave, an electromagnetic wave, or a neutrino wave. The formation of spacetime singularities due to nonlinear interactions and the effects of gravitational wave polarization on the nature of singularities are also explored.