Testing general relativity with pulsar timing.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) will search for direct evidence of gravitational waves emitted by astrophysical sources in accord with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. State of the art laser interferometers located in Hanford, Washington and Livingston Parish, Louisiana will unambiguously measure the infinitesimal displacements of isolated test masses which convey the signature of these gravitational waves. The initial implementation of LIGO will consist of...
We present a review of the spacecraft Doppler tracking technique used in broad band searches for gravitational waves in the millihertz frequency band. After deriving the transfer functions of a gravitational wave pulse and of the noise sources entering into the Doppler observable, we summarize the upper limits for the amplitudes of gravitational wave bursts, continuous, and of a stochastic background estimated by Doppler tracking experiments.