THE LIGO GRAVITATIONAL WAVE OBSERVATORIES: RECENT RESULTS AND FUTURE PLANS

The LIGO interferometers are operating as gravitational wave observatories, with a noise level near an order of magnitude of the goal and the first scientific data recently taken. This data has been analyzed for four different categories of gravitational wave sources; millisecond bursts, inspiralling binary neutron stars, periodic waves from a known pulsar, and stochastic background. Research and development is also underway for the next generation LIGO detector, Advanced LIGO.