We describe the history, methods, tools, and challenges of using pulsars to detect gravitational waves. Pulsars act as celestial clocks detecting gravitational perturbations in space-time at wavelengths of light-years. The field is poised to make its first detection of nanohertz gravitational waves in the next 10 years. Controversies remain over how far we can reduce the noise in the pulsars, h...

We show that gravitational radiation is produced quite efficiently in interactions of classical waves created by resonant decay of a coherently oscillating field. For simple models of chaotic inflation in which the inflaton interacts with another scalar field, we find that today’s ratio of energy density in gravitational waves per octave to the critical density of the universe can be as large a...

In this paper we present results from a new two-dimensional numerical relativity code used to study the interaction of gravitational waves with a black hole. The initial data correspond to a single black hole superimposed with time-symmetric gravita-tional waves (Brill waves). A gauge invariant method is presented for extracting the gravitational waves from the numerically generated spacetime. ...

We study the gravitational waves in the 10-dimensional target space of the superstring theory. Some of these waves have unbroken supersymmetries. They consist of Brinkmann metric and of a 2-form field. Sigma-model duality is applied to such waves. The corresponding solutions we call dual partners of gravitational waves, or dual waves. Some of these dual waves upon Kaluza-Klein dimensional reduc...

In a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmological model with zero spatial curvature, we consider the interaction of the gravitational waves with the plasma in the presence of a weak magnetic field. Using the relativistic hydromagnetic equations it is verified that large amplitude magnetosonic waves are excited, assuming that both, the gravitational field and the weak magnetic field do not brea...

It is known that the biological activity of the brain involves radiation of electric waves. These waves result from ionic currents and charges traveling among the brain’s neurons. But it is obvious that these ions and charges are carried by their relevant masses which should give rise, according to the gravitational theory, to extremely weak gravitational waves. We use in the following the stoc...

Gravitational wave signatures from cosmic strings are analyzed numerically. Cosmic string networks form during phase transistions in the early universe and these networks of long cosmic strings break into loops that radiate energy in the form of gravitational waves until they decay. The gravitational waves come in the form of harmonic modes from individual string loops, a “confusion noise” from...

There are conflicting statements in the literature about the gravitational Faraday rotation of the plane of polarization of polarized electromagnetic radiation travelling through a gravitational wave. This issue is reconsidered using a simple formalism describing the rotation of the plane of polarization in a gravitational field, in the geometric optics approximation. It is shown that, to first...

LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory The LIGO Scientific Collaboration The goal of the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-WaveObservatory (LIGO) is to detect and study gravitational waves of astrophysical origin. Direct detection of gravitational waves holds the promise of testing general relativity in the strong-field limit, of providing a new probe of exotic objects ...