The history of this event, which is epochal for physics, is reconstructed in this book, along with a walk-through of the main principles of how the detectors operate and a discussion of how the search for gravitational waves is conducted. The book concludes with an update of the latest detections and developments to date and a brief look into the future of this exciting research field.

This book is accessible to non-specialist readers from a general audience and is also an excellent introduction to the topic for undergraduates in physics.

Features:

• Provides an introduction to the historic discovery of gravitational waves
• Explains the inner workings of the detectors and the search to find the waves hidden in the data
• Authored by a renowned specialist involved in the ground-breaking discovery

Hartmut Grote is a Professor of physics at Cardiff University, UK. His main expertise is in experimental gravitational-wave physics, and he has worked on building and improving gravitational wave detectors for over 20 years. From 2009 to 2017, he was the scientific leader of the British-German gravitational-wave detector: GEO600.