Progress in Gravitational Wave Detections

The authors review developments in the understanding of gravitational wave sources and give a progress report on the analysis of data taken during a 100-hour coincidence run between the Glasgow and Garching prototype interferometric detectors. Numerical calculations of gravitational waves from supernovae and from coalescing binaries are reviewed, recently proposed sources of a cosmological background of gravitational radiation are mentioned, and expectations regarding gravitational wave instabilities in neutron stars are discussed. The `100-hour run' data provide an excellent opportunity to discover the complexities of analyzing real data, and have allowed the group at Cardiff to develop a prototype automatic data analysis system.