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.

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Introductory overviews of GW science

Broad reviews targeting new undergraduate and graduate students

• Discovering gravitational waves with Advanced LIGO - Jess McIver and David Shoemaker, LIGO-P2000530 (2020)
• Gravitational Waves - Amber Stuver, free IOP e-book (2019)

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General Relativity

Textbooks

(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]

Courses

Resources

Advanced topics

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Gravitational-wave detectors science

Textbooks

• D. G. Blair, E. J. Howell, L. Ju, C. Zhao, Advanced Gravitational Wave Detectors [Cambridge University Press, 2012]
• Jolien D. E. Creighton, 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 online]. This 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 Processes 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]

Resources

• Living Reviews in Relativity
• GWoptics provides information and software related to gravitational wave detection, with a special focus on optics research
• Gravitational-Wave Resources (external)
• Science Education Sites
• soundsofspacetime.org
• The Physics of LIGO
• "Useful Resources for new LSC / LAAC Members" in record E1300744

Courses

• Junior-level course material
• LIGO Seminars at Caltech
• Web-based course on Gravitational Wave Science
• Sonoma State's LIGO Courses & Educator's Guide
• 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 Seminars 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
• Penn State master list with links to slides
• Jim Burge's extensive Tutorials in Optomechanics

Advanced topics

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

Select group meeting recordings

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Data analysis

Textbooks

Talks

Courses

Data Analysis Tutorials

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

Advanced topics

Data Quality Shift Training

• Data quality shift training telecons slides

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

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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

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Organizations and News Letters Relevant to Gravitational Wave Science

• Topical Group in Gravity of the American Physical Society
• Matters of Gravity
• International Society for General Relativity

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