Turning on and tuning up the interferometers for gravitational radiation detection

ABSTRACT: 

In this decade, the detection of gravitational radiation from astrophysical sources will become common place. The 2nd generation interferometers in the U.S., Europe, India, and Japan will be the components of a global network capable of locating towards sources in the gravitational sky; this will allow us to form pictures of the most violent events in the universe with both electromagnetic and gravitational radiation. I will describe the limits of the sensitivity of these instruments and how we can extend them to detect black hole mergers out to billions of light years. These techniques can be applied to the world wide network of detectors, taking us from the era of making detections into making precision measurements of astrophysical phenomena and tests of gravity in the strong field regime.