Gravitational-wave astronomy will soon become a new tool for observing the Universe. Detecting and interpreting gravitational waves will require deep theoretical insights into astronomical sources. The past three decades have seen remarkable progress
in analytical and numerical computations of the source dynamics, development of search algorithms and analysis of data from detectors with unprecedented sensitivity. This Chapter is devoted to examine the advances and future challenges in understanding the dynamics of binary and isolated compact-object systems, expected cosmological sources, their amplitudes and rates, and highlights of results from gravitational-wave observations. All of this is a testament to the readiness of the community to open a new window for observing the cosmos, a century after gravitational waves were first predicted by Albert Einstein.
Inspiralling compact binaries as standard sirens will soon become an invaluable tool for cosmology when advanced interferometric gravitational-wave detectors begin their observations in the coming years. However, a degeneracy in the information carri
ed by gravitational waves between the total rest-frame mass $M$ and the redshift $z$ of the source implies that neither can be directly extracted from the signal, but only the combination $M(1+z)$, the redshifted mass. Recent work has shown that for binary neutron star systems, a tidal correction to the gravitational-wave phase in the late-inspiral signal that depends on the rest-frame source mass could be used to break the mass-redshift degeneracy. We propose here to use the signature encoded in the post-merger signal to deduce the redshift to the source. This will allow an accurate extraction of the intrinsic rest-frame mass of the source, in turn permitting the determination of source redshift and luminosity distance solely from gravitational-wave observations. This will herald a new era in precision cosmography and astrophysics. Using numerical simulations of binary neutron star mergers of very slightly different mass, we model gravitational-wave signals at different redshifts and use Bayesian parameter estimation to determine the accuracy with which the redshift can be extracted for a source of known mass. We find that the Einstein Telescope can determine the source redshift to $sim 10$--$20%$ at redshifts of $z<0.04$.
The advanced interferometer network will herald a new era in observational astronomy. There is a very strong science case to go beyond the advanced detector network and build detectors that operate in a frequency range from 1 Hz-10 kHz, with sensitiv
ity a factor ten better in amplitude. Such detectors will be able to probe a range of topics in nuclear physics, astronomy, cosmology and fundamental physics, providing insights into many unsolved problems in these areas.
Einstein gravitational-wave Telescope (ET) is a design study funded by the European Commission to explore the technological challenges of and scientific benefits from building a third generation gravitational wave detector. The three-year study, whic
h concluded earlier this year, has formulated the conceptual design of an observatory that can support the implementation of new technology for the next two to three decades. The goal of this talk is to introduce the audience to the overall aims and objectives of the project and to enumerate ETs potential to influence our understanding of fundamental physics, astrophysics and cosmology.
Einstein Telescope (ET) is a 3rd generation gravitational-wave (GW) detector that is currently undergoing a design study. ET can detect millions of compact binary mergers up to redshifts 2-8. A small fraction of mergers might be observed in coinciden
ce as gamma-ray bursts, helping to measure both the luminosity distance and red-shift to the source. By fitting these measured values to a cosmological model, it should be possible to accurately infer the dark energy equation-of-state, dark matter and dark energy density parameters. ET could, therefore, herald a new era in cosmology.
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 that are used to extract their signals from detector noise. Then we consider the consequences of gravitational wave detections and observations for physics, astrophysics, and cosmology.
The standard post-Newtonian approximation to gravitational waveforms, called T-approximants, from non-spinning black hole binaries are known not to be sufficiently accurate close to the last stable orbit of the system. A new approximation, called P-a
pproximants, is believed to improve the accuracy of the waveforms rendering them applicable up to the last stable orbit. In this study we apply P-approximants to the case of a test-particle in equatorial orbit around a Kerr black hole parameterized by a spin parameter q that takes values between -1 and 1. In order to assess the performance of the two approximants we measure their effectualness (i.e. larger overlaps with the exact signal), and faithfulness (i.e. smaller biases while measuring the parameters of the signal) with the exact (numerical) waveforms. We find that in the case of prograde orbits, that is orbits whose angular momentum is in the same sense as the spin angular momentum of the black hole, T-approximant templates obtain an effectualness of ~ 0.99 for spins q < 0.75. For 0.75 < q < 0.95, the effectualness drops to about 0.82. The P-approximants achieve effectualness of > 0.99 for all spins up to q = 0.95. The bias in the estimation of parameters is much lower in the case of P-approximants than T-approximants. We find that P-approximants are both effectual and faithful and should be more effective than T-approximants as a detection template family when q>0. For q<0 both T- and P-approximants perform equally well so that either of them could be used as a detection template family.
Astronomical observations in the electromagnetic window - microwave, radio and optical - have revealed that most of the Universe is dark. The only reason we know that dark matter exists is because of its gravitational influence on luminous matter. It
is plausible that a small fraction of that dark matter is clumped, and strongly gravitating. Such systems are potential sources of gravitational radiation that can be observed with a world-wide network of gravitational wave antennas. Electromagnetic astronomy has also revealed objects and phenomena - supernovae, neutron stars, black holes and the big bang - that are without doubt extremely strong emitters of the radiation targeted by the gravitational wave interferometric and resonant bar detectors. In this talk I will highlight why gravitational waves arise in Einsteins theory, how they interact with matter, what the chief astronomical sources of the radiation are, and in which way by observing them we can gain a better understanding of the dark and dense Universe.
The spin modulated gravitational wave signals, which we shall call smirches, emitted by stellar mass black holes tumbling and inspiralling into massive black holes have extremely complicated shapes. Tracking these signals with the aid of pattern matc
hing techniques, such as Wiener filtering, is likely to be computationally an impossible exercise. In this article we propose using a mixture of optimal and non-optimal methods to create a search hierarchy to ease the computational burden. Furthermore, by employing the method of principal components (also known as singular value decomposition) we explicitly demonstrate that the effective dimensionality of the search parameter space of smirches is likely to be just three or four, much smaller than what has hitherto been thought to be about nine or ten. This result, based on a limited study of the parameter space, should be confirmed by a more exhaustive study over the parameter space as well as Monte-Carlo simulations to test the predictions made in this paper.
We extend the description of gravitational waves emitted by binary black holes during the final stages of inspiral and merger by introducing in the third post-Newtonian (3PN) effective-one-body (EOB) templates seven new ``flexibility parameters that
affect the two-body dynamics and gravitational radiation emission. The plausible ranges of these flexibility parameters, notably the parameter characterising the fourth post-Newtonian effects in the dynamics, are estimated. Using these estimates, we show that the currently available standard 3PN bank of EOB templates does ``span the space of signals opened up by all the flexibility parameters, in that their maximized mutual overlaps are larger than 96.5%. This confirms the effectualness of 3PN EOB templates for the detection of binary black holes in gravitational-wave data from interferometric detectors. The possibility to drastically reduce the number of EOB templates using a few ``universal phasing functions is suggested.
