Gravitational waves from coalescing compact binaries

Abstract

This article is intended to provide a pedagogical account of issues related to, and recent work on, gravitational waves from coalescing compact binaries (composed of neutron stars and/or black holes). These waves are the most promising for kilometer-size interferometric detectors such as LIGO and VIRGO. Topics discussed include: interferometric detectors and their noise; coalescing compact binaries and their gravitational waveforms; the technique of matched filtering for signal detection and measurement; waveform calculations in post-Newtonian theory and in the black-hole perturbation approach; and the accuracy of the post-Newtonian expansion.

LaTeX, 18 pages, two figures coming separately in .uu format (just follow the instructions at the beginning of the file). To appear in the Proceedings of the Sixth Canadian Conference on General Relativity and Relativistic Astrophysics