Damir Buskulic: An introduction on gravitational waves physics, results and perspectives

Gravitational wave astronomy has entered the observational era on September 14, 2015 with the first detection by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations of the gravitational wave signal emitted by the final stages of the coalescence of two massive black holes more than 1.3 billion light years away. Two years later, after four other similar events have been detected, on August 17, 2017 the LIGO and Virgo detectors saw a signal immediately identified as the result of the coalescence of two neutron stars.

We will introduce the basic physics of gravitational wave generation and propagation as well as some physics of binary black hole and binary neutron star merger. This will show us the importance of this - not so - emerging field of gravitational wave astronomy for astrophysics, cosmology and even particle physics. A new window was opened for us to look inside the universe.