Experimental Gravitation

This book features a comprehensive review of experimental gravitation. It is a textbook based on the graduate courses on “Experimental Gravitation”  given by the authors at their respective universities in Rome:  Sapienza and Tor Vergata. A number of different research topics in the field are covered: from the torsion pendulum (still today the tool of choice for measuring small forces or torques) to the large interferometers developed to observe gravitational waves. Techniques that are still under development are also discussed, like the pulsar timing array and space-based detectors of the future. This book is written by experimentalists for experimentalists. While the background physics is summarized for less experienced readers, the emphasis is certainly on experimental verifications: the strategy, the apparatuses, the data analysis and the results of many cornerstone experiments are analyzed and discussed in depth. This textbook serves as a useful resource for both graduate students and professionals working in the increasingly vibrant field of experimental gravity.

Classical Gravity.- Keplerian dynamics; Multipole expansion.- Tides.- Active, passive mass. -Torsion Pendulum: the oldest physics experimental tool, operation, strategies, analytic model.- The Equivalence Principle: Weak, Einstein and strong EP, experimental tests. - Principles of metric theories: LLI and LPI and experimental verifications; the red shift.- Schiff's conjecture.- Gravity Tests at 1PN: recap of GR equations.- WFSM approximation, classical tests of GR.- Gravitoelectromagnetism and its tests.- Gravity and PPN.- The PPN formulation of metric theories.- Solar System tests and limits on PPN parameters.- Gravitational Waves (GW): GW in GR and in other theories; emission; sources; signals.- GW Detectors: Interferometers.- Data Analysis.- Pulsars and GR.- Space detectors of GW Sagnac effect. GPS. Modulation. Feedback. FabryPerot.

Fulvio Ricci is Full Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Rome, La Sapienza. He started his scientific career working in the Gravitational Wave (GW) group of Professor E. Amaldi at Rome University. For more than fifteen years, he was at CERN installing and operating the 2300 kg GW detector EXPLORER, which achieved the sensitivity goal of an h~10-19 GW burst 1 ms in duration. In 1995, he became Data Analysis Coordinator for the VIRGO project, a collaborative effort between the two funding agencies INFN-Italy and CNRS-France, for the construction of a 3-km laser interferometer for detecting GWs. From 2007 to 2014, he served as INFN Italian Coordinator of VIRGO, subsequently becoming international collaboration’s Official Spokesperson from 2014 to 2017. Nowadays, he is involved in the Einstein Telescope project devoted to the construction of the new generation of GW detectors on the Earth.

Massimo Bassan is Associate Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at the University of Rome, Tor Vergata. He graduated from Sapienza with E. Amaldi and G. Pizzella, developing the first Italian prototype interferometer for gravitational waves. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, working with W.M. Fairbank and then spent many years developing and operating cryogenic resonant antennas. He is presently involved with LISA, the space-based gravitational wave detector, as well as with a laboratory experiment `` Liquid Activated Gravity"  using a double torsion pendulum.