Gravitational wave astronomy: Recent advances

Abstract

Several groundbased gravitational wave (GW) laser interferometric projects have completed construction and are currently involved in conducting engineering runs. The spacebased NASA-ESA mission, LISA is expected to be launched in ten years' time. With the data around the comer exciting times lie ahead for GW astronomy. A brief introduction to GW detection, the principle of GW detection, the current status of ground based detectors, the space based detector LISA, GW sources and the data analysis necessary to extract the weak GW signal from the detector noise will be presented.