Gravitational-wave astronomy: the high-frequency window

TL;DR

This paper introduces gravitational-wave physics, focusing on high-frequency sources like collapsing stars and neutron stars, emphasizing the importance of future detectors for exploring these energetic astrophysical events.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive introduction to gravitational radiation and reviews high-frequency gravitational wave sources, highlighting their potential to reveal astrophysical phenomena.

Findings

Quadrupole formula applied to inspiralling binaries

High-frequency sources include collapse and neutron star oscillations

Future detectors could uncover detailed physics of compact objects

Abstract

This contribution is divided in two parts. The first part provides a text-book level introduction to gravitational radiation. The key concepts required for a discussion of gravitational-wave physics are introduced. In particular, the quadrupole formula is applied to the anticipated ``bread-and-butter'' source for detectors like LIGO, GEO600, EGO and TAMA300: inspiralling compact binaries. The second part provides a brief review of high frequency gravitational waves. In the frequency range above (say) 100Hz, gravitational collapse, rotational instabilities and oscillations of the remnant compact objects are potentially important sources of gravitational waves. Significant and unique information concerning the various stages of collapse, the evolution of protoneutron stars and the details of the supranuclear equation of state of such objects can be drawn from careful study of the gravitational-wave signal. As the amount of exciting physics one may be able to study via the detections of gravitational waves from these sources is truly inspiring, there is strong motivation for the development of future generations of ground based detectors sensitive in the range from hundreds of Hz to several kHz.