The future of gravitational-wave detectors

Next years are very promising for the search on gravitational-waves detection. After the pioneering work of resonant antennas a new class of instruments, the interferometric detectors, has been recently put into operation with sensitivities and detection bandwidth orders of magnitudes better than the old experimental apparata. These new instruments are currently beginning a series of upgrades that will end in 2014 at the so-called advanced stage, with a sensitivity ten times better than the present one. At that time several events per year should be detected. On the long-term scale, more sensitive gravitational detectors, presently in the conceptual design phase, will start a systematic gravitational wave astronomy.