Laser interferometer gravitational wave detectors are poised to launch a new era of gravitational wave astronomy and unprecedented tests of general relativity. I will describe experimental efforts worldwide to detect gravitational waves, and the progress to date. Terrestrial gravitational wave detectors must be sensitive to displacements of less than 1e-19 m/rtHz in their most sensitive band around 100 Hz. The limits to the sensitivity of the present generation of interferometric gravitational wave detectors and the path to higher sensitivity future gravitational wave detectors will also be discussed.

Professor Nergis Mavalvala joined the Physics faculty at MIT in January 2002. Before that, she was a postdoctoral associate and then a research scientist at Caltech, working on the Laser Interferometric Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). She has been involved with LIGO since her early years in graduate school at MIT and her primary research has been in instrument development for interferometric gravitational-wave detectors. Professor Mavalvala received a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT in 1997, and a B.A. in Physics and Astronomy from Wellesley College in 1990.

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