Detection of gravitational waves

[Ranku]

What is the state-of-the-art of detecting gravity waves. Are the instruments available now sufficiently sensitive to detect gravity waves? Have we identified 'low-hanging' sources from whom gravity waves should have been detectable. Have we yet reached that point where serious questions are arising as to the direct detectiblity of gravity waves?

 

[steli]

LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna)
LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory)

 

[nicksauce]

To add some detail to the above;

LIGO is the current state of the art right now. However, its expected event rate is about 3 per century if I recall correctly, so it isn't terribly surprising that we haven't seen any yet. An upgraded version of LIGO called Advanced LIGO should be ready in 2014. It is about 10 times more sensitive than LIGO, and can thus see 1000 times more sources, so it should see a good amount of events every year. Its best sources are compact binaries (black holes or neutron stars). In ~2019-2020 LISA should come online. It is a gravitational wave observatory in space. Since it isn't limited by seismic noise, it can see sources with lower frequencies sources like white dwarf binaries, and extreme mass ratio events. This image illustrates their sensitivity curves: http://imgur.com/VDNpR

 

[Ranku]

I started another thread in Cosmology as I wasn't getting much here. That thread became pretty extensive, you may want to check that out: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=365709