GRAVITATIONAL WAVES: SOURCES AND DETECTORS

The world wide efforts for detecting gravitational waves, the detectors in vogue and the expected astrophysical sources of gravitational waves will be discussed. Ground based detectors especially, the resonant bar detectors and laser interferometers will be described with a brief mention of the space based detector (the LISA project). Astrophysical sources of gravitational waves such as coalescing binaries, supernovae, pulsars/ rotating neutron stars, stochastic background will be discussed in the context of detection.