| Preface | |
| The Search for Gravitational Waves | p. 1 |
| The Importance of the Search | p. 1 |
| A Bit of History | p. 2 |
| The Practice of Gravitational Wave Detection | p. 4 |
| A Guide for the Reader | p. 6 |
| The Nature of Gravitational Waves | p. 9 |
| Waves in General Relativity | p. 9 |
| The Michelson-Morley Experiment | p. 12 |
| A Schematic Detector of Gravitational Waves | p. 18 |
| Description of Gravitational Waves in Terms of Force | p. 25 |
| Sources of Gravitational Waves | p. 29 |
| Physics of Gravitational Wave Generation | p. 29 |
| In the Footsteps of Heinrich Hertz? | p. 33 |
| Observation of Gravitational Wave Emission | p. 36 |
| Astronomical Sources of Gravitational Waves | p. 38 |
| Linear Systems, Signals and Noise | p. 49 |
| Characterizing a Time Series | p. 49 |
| Linear Systems | p. 55 |
| The Signal-to-Noise Ratio | p. 62 |
| Optical Readout Noise | p. 71 |
| Photon Shot Noise | p. 71 |
| Radiation Pressure Noise | p. 75 |
| Shot Noise in Classical and Quantum Mechanics | p. 80 |
| The Remarkable Precision of Interferometry | p. 83 |
| Folded Interferometer Arms | p. 85 |
| Herriott Delay Line | p. 86 |
| Beam Diameter and Mirror Diameter | p. 88 |
| Fabry-Perot Cavities | p. 90 |
| A Long Fabry-Perot Cavity | p. 97 |
| Hermite-Gaussian Beams | p. 97 |
| Scattered Light in Interferometers | p. 99 |
| Comparison of Fabry-Perot Cavities with Delay Lines | p. 101 |
| Optical Readout Noise in Folded Interferometers | p. 101 |
| Transfer Function of a Folded Interferometer | p. 102 |
| To Fold, or Not to Fold? | p. 105 |
| Thermal Noise | p. 107 |
| Brownian Motion | p. 107 |
| Brownian Motion of a Macroscopic Mass Suspended in a Dilute Gas | p. 108 |
| The Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem | p. 110 |
| Remarks on the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem | p. 112 |
| The Quality Factor, Q | p. 113 |
| Thermal Noise in a Gas-Damped Pendulum | p. 114 |
| Dissipation from Internal Friction in Materials | p. 116 |
| Special Features of the Pendulum | p. 121 |
| Thermal Noise of the Pendulum's Internal Modes | p. 124 |
| Seismic Noise and Vibration Isolation | p. 127 |
| Ambient Seismic Spectrum | p. 127 |
| Seismometers | p. 129 |
| Vibration Isolators | p. 130 |
| Myths About Vibration Isolation | p. 132 |
| Isolation in an Interferometer | p. 133 |
| Stacks and Multiple Pendulums | p. 136 |
| Q: High or Low? | p. 139 |
| A Gravitational "Short Circuit" Around Vibration Isolators | p. 141 |
| Beyond Passive Isolation | p. 142 |
| Design Features of Large Interferometers | p. 145 |
| How Small Can We Make a Gravitational Wave Interferometer? | p. 145 |
| Noise from Residual Gas | p. 147 |
| The Space-Borne Alternative | p. 151 |
| Null Instruments | p. 153 |
| Some virtues of nullity | p. 154 |
| The Advantages of Chopping | p. 162 |
| The Necessity to Operate a Gravitational Wave Interferometer as an Active Null Instrument | p. 164 |
| Feedback control systems | p. 169 |
| The Loop Transfer Function | p. 171 |
| The Closed Loop Transfer Function | p. 172 |
| Designing the Loop Transfer Function | p. 174 |
| Instability | p. 175 |
| The Compensation Filter | p. 179 |
| Active Damping: A Servo Design Example | p. 181 |
| Feedback to Reduce Seismic Noise over a Broad Band | p. 188 |
| An Interferometer as an Active Null Instrument | p. 191 |
| Fringe-Lock in a Non-Resonant Interferometer | p. 191 |
| Shot Noise in a Modulated Interferometer | p. 198 |
| Rejection of Laser Output Power Noise | p. 199 |
| Locking the Fringe | p. 199 |
| Fringe Lock for a Fabry-Perot Cavity | p. 203 |
| A Simple Interferometer with Fabry-Perot Arms | p. 206 |
| Beyond the Basic Interferometer | p. 208 |
| Resonant Mass Gravitational Wave Detectors | p. 215 |
| Does Form Follow Function? | p. 215 |
| The Idea of Resonant Mass Detectors | p. 216 |
| A Bar's Impulse Response and Transfer Function | p. 217 |
| Resonant Transducers | p. 222 |
| Thermal Noise in a Bar | p. 224 |
| Bandwidth of Resonant Mass Detectors | p. 228 |
| A Real Bar | p. 231 |
| Quantum Mechanical Sensitivity "Limit" | p. 232 |
| Beyond the Quantum "Limit"? | p. 235 |
| Detecting Gravitational Wave Signals | p. 237 |
| The Signal Detection Problem | p. 237 |
| Probability Distribution of Time Series | p. 238 |
| Coincidence Detection | p. 244 |
| Optimum Orientation | p. 245 |
| Local Coincidences | p. 246 |
| Searching for Periodic Gravitational Waves | p. 247 |
| Searching for a Stochastic Background | p. 252 |
| Gravitational Wave Astronomy | p. 255 |
| Gravitational Wave Astronomy | p. 255 |
| Gravitational Wave Source Positions | p. 255 |
| Interpretation of Gravitational Waveforms | p. 264 |
| Previous Gravitational Wave Searches | p. 268 |
| Prospects | p. 277 |
| A Prototype Interferometer | p. 277 |
| LIGO | p. 279 |
| Proposed Features of 4 km Interferometers | p. 279 |
| References | p. 283 |
| Index | p. 295 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
