Invited_talk abstract details

After years of commissioning and increasingly more sensitive science runs, gravitational wave detectors have reached their first-stage design sensitivity and are now operating full-time. Data sharing agreements among LIGO, GEO and Virgo also make a reality that gravitational wave detectors will be operated as an integrated network.

In this talk I will survey the state of the various detectors and the prospects for the future, including the plans for advanced and third generation ground-based detectors, as well as the LISA mission. I will also review the way the data are being analyzed, and the impact of gravitational wave observations on astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics. To date, no claim of detection has been yet made. However, upper limit measurements, inferred from these null results, are beginning to probe potentially interesting regions of the space of parameters of astrophysical signals and source population models.