(ed.). Gravitational waves (IOP, 2001)(422s).

PrefaceGravitational waves today represent a hot topic, which promises to play a centralrole in astrophysics, cosmology and theoretical physics.Technological developments have led us to the brink of their directobservation, which could become a reality in the coming years.The direct observation of gravitational waves will open an entirely newfield; gravitational wave astronomy. This is expected to bring a revolution inour knowledge of the universe by allowing the observation of hitherto unseenphenomena such as coalescence of compact objects (neutron stars and blackholes), fall of stars into supermassive black holes, stellar core collapses, big-bangrelics and the new and unexpected.During Spring 1999, the SIGRAV—Società Italiana di Relatività eGravitazione (Italian Society of Relativity and Gravitation) sponsored theorganization of a doctoral school on ‘Gravitational Waves in Astrophysics,Cosmology and String Theory’, which took place at the Center for ScientificCulture ‘Alessandro Volta’ located in the beautiful environment of Villa Olmoin Como, Italy.This book brings together the courses given at the school and providesa comprehensive review of gravitational waves. It includes a wide range ofcontributions by leading scientists in the field. Topics covered are: the basicsof GW with some recent advanced topics, GW detectors, the astrophysics of GWsources, numerical applications and several recent theoretical developments. Thematerial is written at a level suitable for postgraduate students entering the field.The main financial support for the School came from the Universityof Insubria at Como-Varese. Other contributors were the Department ofChemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the same University, thePhysics Departments of the Universities of Milan and Turin, and the Instituteof Physics of Interplanetary Space—CNR, Frascati.We are grateful to all the members of the scientific organizing committeeand to the scientific coordinator of Centro Volta, Professor G Casati, for theirinvaluable help.We also acknowledge the essential organizational support of the secretarialconference staff of Centro Volta, in particular of Chiara Stefanetti.I Ciufolini, V Gorini, U Moschella and P FréComo12 June 2000xiii