Science Colloquium
What are Gravitational Waves?
Ripples in Spacetime ...
Nicolas Tremblay
Bishop's University
Friday, December 8, 2006
12:30 - 1:20 PM
Hamilton Room 302
Gravitational waves arise as solutions of the Einstein equations. Their existence has therefore been implied by General Relativity a long time ago, but their direct detection is proving to be very difficult. Nevertheless, very large and sensitive detectors are currently in operation and future developments are under way, making this challenging task of detecting gravitational waves a very exciting field of physics.
During this talk I will be giving a brief introduction to the basics of general relativity including linearized gravity and gauge transformations, gravitational waves solutions, the production of gravitational waves, gravitational radiation, as well as the detection methods, sources of gravitational waves and various detectors (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), etc.). Some aspects of this talk will be more technical while some others more accessible, but a background in general relativity is not assumed.
