Gravitational wave astronomy: Probing physics and unravelling astrophysics

Presented at the 21st meeting of the Astronomical Society of India, Pune, 2002.Kilometer scale Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Detectors like LIGO (VIRGO) are expected to go online in 2002 (2003). Space interferometers like LISA are scheduled for 2011. In this talk the possible science payoffs of these experiments are explored. Starting from the basic properties of gravitational waves and anticipated gravitational wave sources, it highlights the implications of gravitational wave observations for basic physics, astrophysics and cosmology. The current status of theoretical computation of waveforms and templates for data analysis is briefly discussed