Educational Resources

This is a collection of various talks, lectures, books, and other resources that you might find helpful in your quest to learn more about gravitational waves.

LIGO Seminars at Caltech

Select group meeting recordings

The Physics of LIGO

Web-based course on Gravitational Wave Science

• There is a collection of "Useful Resources for new LSC / LAAC Members" in record E1300744

Junior-level course material

Sonoma State's LIGO Courses & Educator's Guide

Videos and Slides of Lectures

• Rana Adhikari's talks at the International Centre for Theoretical Science/Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Winter School on Experimental Gravitational-Wave Physics
  1. Overview of Gravitational Waves and Detectors (Survey of past and present detectors)
  2. Details of Current Detectors (Stories about current and past detectors)
  3. Control Systems
  4. Optics of Fabry-Perot Cavities (Matrix approach for interferometer fields)
  5. Vibration Isolation
  6. Shot Noise and Radiation Pressure Noise (Vacuum fluctuations/quantum noise propagation)
  7. Introduction to Finesse
  8. Optics of Fabry-Perot Cavities
  9. Thermal Noise (Coatings, noise cancellation, generalized coordinates)
• Rana Adhikari's CaJAGWR Semnars that are on YouTube
  1. Tuning LIGO to Listen to Gravitational Waves
  2. Sensitivity Improvements in the LIGO Interferometers
  3. Turning on and Tuning in the Gravitational Radiation Antennae
• Caltech-JPL Association for Gravitational-Wave Research (CaJAGWR) seminars: videos and slides
• Caltech LIGO seminars: videos and slides
• Alan Weinstein's 2006 lectures on Gravitational Waves and LIGO: Lecture 1, Lecture 2, Lecture 3, Slides.
• 2005 SLAC Summer School:
  • "Gravitational Radiation" by Alessandra Buonanno: Lecture 1, Lecture 2;
  • "Gravitational Wave Interferometric Detectors" by Gabriela Gonzalez: Lecture
• Other past conferences and workshops:
• Penn State master list with links to slides

Summer Schools in Gravitational Wave Science

• ICTS Summer School on Gravitational-Wave Astronomy Bangalore, India, August 3-24, 2018
• 2nd ICE Summer School Institute of Space Sciences, Barcelona, Spain, July 2-6, 2018
• NBIA & DARK PhD Summer School Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, July 2-6, 2018
• OSG User School 2018 University of Wisconsin-Madison, July 9-13, 2018
• Advanced Software Programming for Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics Annecy, France, June 4-8, 2018
• Neutron Star Merger Summer School Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan, USA, May 16-18, 2018
• Indiana University Center for Spacetime Symmetries Summer School Bloomington, Indiana, USA, June 15-21, 2018
• International Pulsar Timing Array Student Workshop Socorro, New Mexico, USA, June 11-15, 2018
• XIX LNF Spring School in Nuclear, Subnuclear and Astroparticle Physics Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Italy, May 7-11, 2018
• Exploring the Universe through Multiple Messengers Lake Baikal, Russia, July 12 - 21, 2018
• Gravitational Waves 2018 Les Houches, France, July 2 - 27, 2018
• Dublin School on Gravitational Wave Source Modelling Dublin, Ireland, June 11 - 22, 2018
• The XIII Sigrav Graduate School in Contemporary Relativity and Gravitational Physics Como, Italy, May 28 - June 1, 2018
• The 35th Jerusalem Winter School in Theoretical Physics: The Physics of Astronomical Transients Jerusalem, Israel, December 27, 2017 - January 5, 2018
• EU Einstein Toolkit 2017 & EdFest Mallorca, Spain, October 11-14, 2017
• 2017 North American Einstein Toolkit School and Workshop at NCSA Urbana, Illinois, July 31 - August 4, 2017
• 48th Saas-Fee Course: Black Hole Formation and Growth Saas-Fee, Switzerland, January 28 - February 3, 2018
• Scottish Universities Summer School in Physics: Gravitational Wave Astronomy St Andrews, Scotland, July 23 - Aug 5, 2017
• School on Gravitational Waves for Cosmology and Astrophysics Benasque, Spain, May 28 - June 10, 2017
• Kavli Summer Program in Astrophysics Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, July 10 - August 18, 2017
• The iPTF Summer School Caltech, July 18-21, 2016
  
• TACC Summer Supercomputing Institute The University of Texas at Austin, August 1-5, 2016
• Supercomputing for Everyone Series: Performance Tuning Summer School Texas Advanced Computing Center, Austin, Texas, August 17 - 21, 2015
• International HPC Summer School 2015 Toronto, Canada, June 21-26, 2015
• ICTP-SAIFR School on Gravitational Waves: From Data to Theory & Back, São Paulo, Brazil, August 3-11, 2015
• 2015 FERMI Summer School, University of Delaware, May 26-June 5, 2015
• Caltech Gravitational Wave Astrophysics School, Caltech, July 6-10, 2015
• 1st GraWIToN School, Pisa, Italy, 20 April 2015 - 08 May 2015
• Big Data Analytics, JPL-Caltech, Sept 2-12, 2014
• 2013 International School on Numerical Relativity and Gravitational Waves, Pohang, Korea
• International Summer School on Astroparticle Physics OHP, Saint Michel l'Observatoire, France
• Pulsars and Gravitational Radiation Green Bank, WV

Textbooks on General Relativity

(in increasing order of difficulty)

• Bernard F. Schutz, Gravity from the Ground Up [Cambridge University Press, 2003]
• James B. Hartle, Gravity, An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity [Addison-Wesley, 2003]
• Bernard F. Schutz, A First Course in General Relativity [Cambridge University Press, 1985]
• Roger D. Blandford, Kip S. Thorne, Applications of Classical Physics, Chapters 23-27 [in preparation for publication]
• Sean Carroll, Spacetime and Geometry [Addison-Wesley, 2004]
• Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne and John A. Wheeler, Gravitation[Freeman, 1973]
• Robert M. Wald, General Relativity [University of Chicago Press, 1984]

Textbooks on Gravitational Wave Science

• D. G. Blair, E. J. Howell, L. Ju, C. Zhao, Advanced Gravitational Wave Detectors [Cambridge University Press, 2012]
• Jolien D. E. Chreighton, Warren G. Anderson, Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy: An Introduction to Theory, Experiment and Data Analysis[Wiley, 2011]
• Peter R. Saulson, Fundamentals of Interferometric Gravitational Wave Detectors [World Scientific, 1994]
• Roger D. Blandford, Kip S. Thorne, Applications of Classical Physics [in preparation; available onlineThis book includes
  • physics underlying gravitational wave detectors [Optics in Chapters 6-9; Elasticity in Chapters 10-11]
  • some mathematics underlying noise theory and data analysis [Theory of Random Processees in Chapter 5]
  • theory of gravitational waves [Chapter 26]
• Kip S. Thorne, Gravitational Radiation: A New Window onto the Universe[arXiv, 1997]
  • This is an extended version of a chapter in Three Hundred Years of Gravitation , eds. S.W. Hawking and W. Israel [Cambridge University Press, 1987]
• David H. Reitze, Peter R. Saulson, Hartmut Grote, Advanced Interferometric Gravitational Wave Detectors [World Scientific, 2019]

Review Articles on Gravitational Wave Science

• Living Reviews in Relativity

Organizations and News Letters Relevant to Gravitational Wave Science

• Topical Group in Gravity of the American Physical Society
  • Matters of Gravity
• Society for General Relativity
  • Hyperspace Information Page

Other Gravitational Wave Resources

• GWoptics provides information and software related to gravitational wave detection, with a special focus on optics research
• Gravitational-Wave Resources
• Science Education Sites
• soundsofspacetime.org

Condor

• LSC Beginner's Guide: document in DCC, wiki page
• Introduction to Condor slides by Tanner Prestegard (associated files)
• Condor tutorial from LSC Grid Camp

Data Quality Shift Training

• Data quality shift training telecons slides

Data Analysis Tutorials

• Data analysis tutorials at Maastricht 2018 LVC meeting
• Jupyter notebook tutorial for parameter estimation

Control Systems Tutorials

• 2019 October 2nd T. Dehaeze, Sensor Fusion Design using H infinity, slides G1901936, recording G1901937
• 2020 February 5th, A. Pele, Seismic Control System, slides G2000186, recording T2000058
• 2020 March 5th, J. Rollins, Advanced LIGO real time control and automation systems, slides G2000324, recording T2000130
• 2020 April 9th, E. Schwartz, Improving IFO robustness during Earthquakes, slides G1902080, recording G2000556
• 2020 May 6th, M. Kasprzack, Angular Sensing and Control in Advanced LIGO, slides G2000716, recording T2000305

Other useful talks

This page contains some useful talks/seminar recordings from DAC, GSTLAL,CaJaGWR, DetChar meetings and miscellaneous talks

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CaJaGWR meetings

• CaJaGWR meeting: "Expanding the Network of Advanced GW Detectors" by Jay Marx 3/29/11 zip file (101MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it
• CaJaGWR meeting: "Expanding the Network of Advanced GW Detectors" by Jay Marx 3/29/11 Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.

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DAC meetings

• DAC meeting: "Virgo data characterization and impact on gravitational wave searches" by Florent Robinet 2/17/12 Audio-only mp3 file (11MB)
• DAC meeting: "Virgo data characterization and impact on gravitational wave searches" by Florent Robinet 2/17/12 zip file (16MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it.
• DAC meeting: "Virgo data characterization and impact on gravitational wave searches" by Florent Robinet 2/17/12 Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• DAC meeting: "Virgo data characterization and impact on gravitational wave searches" by Florent Robinet 2/17/12 Slides, PDF, 2MB

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• DAC meeting: "A FIRST SEARCH FOR COINCIDENT GRAVITATIONAL WAVES AND HIGH ENERGY NEUTRINOS USING LIGO, VIRGO AND ANTARES DATA FROM 2007" by Irene Di Palma 2/10/12 Audio-only mp3 file (16MB)
• DAC meeting: "A FIRST SEARCH FOR COINCIDENT GRAVITATIONAL WAVES AND HIGH ENERGY NEUTRINOS USING LIGO, VIRGO AND ANTARES DATA FROM 2007" by Irene Di Palma 2/10/12 zip file (16MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it.
• DAC meeting: "A FIRST SEARCH FOR COINCIDENT GRAVITATIONAL WAVES AND HIGH ENERGY NEUTRINOS USING LIGO, VIRGO AND ANTARES DATA FROM 2007" by Irene Di Palma 2/10/12 Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• DAC meeting: "A FIRST SEARCH FOR COINCIDENT GRAVITATIONAL WAVES AND HIGH ENERGY NEUTRINOS USING LIGO, VIRGO AND ANTARES DATA FROM 2007" by Irene Di Palma 2/10/12 Slides, PDF, 1MB

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• DAC meeting: "Gamma-ray pulsar discoveries with Fermi-LAT data using blind search methods originally developed for detecting continuous gravitational waves" by Holger Pletsch (AEI , Hannover) 12/09/11 Audio-only mp3 file (16MB)
• DAC meeting: "Gamma-ray pulsar discoveries with Fermi-LAT data using blind search methods originally developed for detecting continuous gravitational waves" by Holger Pletsch (AEI , Hannover) 12/09/11 zip file (16MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it.
• DAC meeting: "Gamma-ray pulsar discoveries with Fermi-LAT data using blind search methods originally developed for detecting continuous gravitational waves" by Holger Pletsch (AEI , Hannover) 12/09/11 Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• DAC meeting: "Gamma-ray pulsar discoveries with Fermi-LAT data using blind search methods originally developed for detecting continuous gravitational waves" by Holger Pletsch (AEI , Hannover) 12/09/11 Slides, PDF, 17MB

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• DAC meeting: "Towards a generic test of the strong field dynamics of general relativity using compact binary coalescence" by Walter Del Pozzo et al 11/18/11 Audio-only mp3 file (13MB)
• DAC meeting: "Towards a generic test of the strong field dynamics of general relativity using compact binary coalescence" by Walter Del Pozzo et al 11/18/11 zip file (16MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it.
• DAC meeting: "Towards a generic test of the strong field dynamics of general relativity using compact binary coalescence" by Walter Del Pozzo et al 11/18/11 Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• DAC meeting: "Towards a generic test of the strong field dynamics of general relativity using compact binary coalescence" by Walter Del Pozzo et al 11/18/11 Slides, PDF, 10MB

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• DAC meeting: "Measuring a cosmological distance-redshift relationship using only gravitational wave observations of binary neutron star coalescences" by Chris Messenger (Cardiff University), Jocelyn Read (University of Mississippi) 8/12/11 Audio-only mp3 file (12MB)
• DAC meeting: "Measuring a cosmological distance-redshift relationship using only gravitational wave observations of binary neutron star coalescences" by Chris Messenger (Cardiff University), Jocelyn Read (University of Mississippi) 8/12/11 zip file (20MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it.
• DAC meeting: "Measuring a cosmological distance-redshift relationship using only gravitational wave observations of binary neutron star coalescences" by Chris Messenger (Cardiff University), Jocelyn Read (University of Mississippi) 8/12/11Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• DAC meeting: "Measuring a cosmological distance-redshift relationship using only gravitational wave observations of binary neutron star coalescences" by Chris Messenger (Cardiff University), Jocelyn Read (University of Mississippi) 8/12/11 PDF File (6MB)

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• LIGO Seminar (Caltech): "Networks of Detectors" by Bernard Schutz (AEI & Cardiff) 6/17/11 zip file (33MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it.
• LIGO Seminar (Caltech): "Networks of Detectors" by Bernard Schutz (AEI & Cardiff) 6/17/11 Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• LIGO Seminar (Caltech): "Networks of Detectors" by Bernard Schutz (AEI & Cardiff) 6/17/11 PDF File (2 MB)

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• DAC meeting: "Lessons learned from the Big Dog blind injection" 5/13/11 zip file (35MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it.
• DAC meeting: "Lessons learned from the Big Dog blind injection" 5/13/11 Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• DAC meeting: "Lessons learned from the Big Dog blind injection" 5/13/11 Agenda and Minutes

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GSTLAL group meetings

• GSTLAL meeting: "GStreamer tutorial" by Kipp Cannon (CITA) 9/12/11 Audio-only mp3 file (35MB) , avi file (207MB) , mov file (220MB), best for Mac Users . Recommended player - VLC.
• GSTLAL meeting: "GStreamer tutorial" by Kipp Cannon (CITA) 9/12/11 zip file (232MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it.
• GSTLAL meeting: "GStreamer tutorial" by Kipp Cannon (CITA) 9/12/11 Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• GSTLAL meeting: "GStreamer tutorial" by Kipp Cannon (CITA) 9/12/11 [14]

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DetChar Group meetings

• DetChar meeting: "Interferometer Sensing and Control for the Dual-Recycled Michelson Interferometer" by Keiko Kokeyama (LSU) 11/18/13 Gzipped EVO recording (41 MB).
• DetChar meeting: "Overview of Advanced LIGO Suspensions" by Brett Shapiro (MIT) 8/25/11 Audio-only mp3 file (15MB) . Recommended player - VLC.
• DetChar meeting: "Overview of Advanced LIGO Suspensions" by Brett Shapiro (MIT) 8/25/11 zip file (27MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it.
• DetChar meeting: "Overview of Advanced LIGO Suspensions" by Brett Shapiro (MIT) 8/25/11 Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• DetChar meeting: "Overview of Advanced LIGO Suspensions" by Brett Shapiro (MIT) 8/25/11 PDF File (7MB)

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• DetChar meeting: "Cosmic Rays at LHO" by Ray Frey (University of Oregon) 6/23/11 Audio-only mp3 file (15MB)
• DetChar meeting: "Cosmic Rays at LHO" by Ray Frey (University of Oregon) 6/23/11 zip file (106MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it.
• DetChar meeting: "Cosmic Rays at LHO" by Ray Frey (University of Oregon) 6/23/11 Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• DetChar meeting: "Cosmic Rays at LHO" by Ray Frey (University of Oregon) 6/23/11 PDF File (0.3 MB)

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• DetChar meeting: "aLIGO Active Seismic Isolation" by Jeff Kissel (MIT) 4/7/11 zip file (55MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it
• DetChar meeting: "aLIGO Active Seismic Isolation" by Jeff Kissel (MIT) 4/7/11 Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• DetChar meeting: "aLIGO Active Seismic Isolation" by Jeff Kissel (MIT) 4/7/11 - Slides from DCC (32MB)

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• DetChar meeting: "aLIGO pre-stabilized laser system (PSL)" by Benno Willke 2/24/11 (non-edited version) - zip file (55MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it
• DetChar meeting: "aLIGO pre-stabilized laser system (PSL)" by Benno Willke 2/24/11 (non-edited version) - Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• DetChar meeting: "aLIGO pre-stabilized laser system (PSL)" by Benno Willke 2/24/11 - Slides from DCC

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• DetChar meeting: "aLIGO Data Acquisition" by Keith Thorne 2/17/11 (non-edited version) - zip file (150MB) , best if you want to download it on your local machine and use EVOPLayer to see it
• DetChar meeting: "aLIGO Data Acquisition" by Keith Thorne 2/17/11 (non-edited version) - Streaming using EVOPlayer Click here if you want to see it immediately, using EVOPlayer. Could be a bit worse in terms of quality - feed will be streamed out of www.ligo.caltech.edu and you should have good network all the way to get a good quality video.
• DetChar meeting: "aLIGO Data Acquisition" by Keith Thorne 2/17/11 - Slides from DCC

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Miscellaneous Recordings

Hint:For EVO/SeeVogh recordings, use SeeVogh Recording player, click on Menu, and open the .evo or .zip file you download from this page.

• Gravity: Making Waves*
• This LSC page* provides a links to a few interesting videos.
• GW Open Data Workshop 2011: EVO recordings and converted files*
• "Looking forward, looking back": SeeVogh recording of Peter Saulson's talk , Sept 26, 2013. (Note that the audio starts at 08:56..) Slides are in LIGO-G1301110.