Observations of gravitational radiation from black holes and neutron stars promise to dramatically transform our view of the universe. This new topic of gravitational-wave astronomy will be initiated with detections by recently commissioned gravitational-wave detectors. These are notably the Laser Interferometric Gravitational wave Observatory LIGO (US), Virgo (Europe), TAMA (Japan) and GEO (Germany), and various bar detectors in the US and Europe.

This book is intended for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who are interested in this emerging opportunity. The audience is expected to be familiar with electromagnetism, thermodynamics, classical and quantum mechanics. Given the rapid development in gravitational wave experiments and our understanding of sources of gravitational waves, it is recommended that this book is used in combination with current review articles.

This book developed as a graduate text on general relativity and gravitational radiation in a one-semester special topics graduate course at MIT. It started with an invitation of Gerald E. Brown for a Physics Reports on gamma-ray bursts. Why study gamma-ray bursters? Because they are there, representing the most energetic and relativistic transients in the sky? Or perhaps because they hold further promise as burst sources of gravitational radiation?

Our focus is on gravitational radiation powered with rotating black holes – the two most fundamental predictions of general relativity for astronomy (other than cosmology). General relativity is a classical field theory, and we believe it applies to all macroscopic bodies.