Gravitational Waves from Gravitational Collapse

Gravitational wave emission from stellar collapse has been studied for more than three decades. Current state-of-the-art numerical investigations of collapse include those that use progenitors with more realistic angular momentum profiles, properly treat microphysics issues, account for general relativity, and examine non-axisymmetric effects in three dimensions. Such simulations predict that gravitational waves from various phenomena associated with gravitational collapse could be detectable with ground-based and space-based interferometric observatories. This review covers the entire range of stellar collapse sources of gravitational waves: from the accretion induced collapse of a white dwarf through the collapse down to neutron stars or black holes of massive stars to the collapse of supermassive stars. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: Supplementary material is available for this article at 10.12942/lrr-2003-2.