Gravitational Wave Astronomy: A New Window onto the Universe

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The past three years has been a period of great progress in gravitational waves. The LIGO-GEO network of interferometers, took science quality data over several science runs. The most recent data taking, the fifth science run began in November 2005 and will last until the end of 2007. At the start of this run the LIGO instruments all reached their design sensitivity goal. Currently, the LIGO network is capable of detecting the coalescence of binary neutron stars and binary black holes up to distances of 25 and 300 Mpc, respectively. With an expected rate of up to one BBH coalescence per year, there is a fighting chance that the first detections will take place during the current run. Recently, the LIGO, GEO600 and Virgo have reached an agreement to analyse their data jointly. This has paved the way for a global network of detectors that will observe the gravitational sky continuously over the next decade. A key theme of our research over the next 5 years is to add Virgo data to our analyses pipelines, thereby increasing both the detection efficiency and science throughput. The proposed research is focussed on maximising the discovery potential of GEO600, LIGO (and their upgrades to enhanced and advanced configuations) and Virgo, in some of which PPARC has made substantial investment for over a decade. Specifically, our goal is to search for binary neutron stars and binary black holes, supernovae, progenitors of gamma-ray bursts and other transients - sources that are expected to be the most promising for a first direct detection of gravitational waves. Our research programme will address two of the key science quesitions in the PPARC roadmap: (1) What is the Universe made of and how does it evolve? and (2) What are the laws of physics in extreme conditions?