Prof. Sanjit Mitra

The first decade of Gravitational Wave (GW) Astronomy has been thoroughly eventful and rich with groundbreaking science. Yet, this is just the beginning of observations through a new window of astronomy. The present and future ground-based detectors promise a large spectrum of exciting science. This can be accelerated manyfold with LIGO-India, without which it may take decades to achieve these goals. In addition, strategies to improve the efficiency and confidence of detections are essential to increase the rate and kind of detected sources and expand the size and dimensionality of their parameter spaces. Which, in turn, can lead to stronger constraints on astrophysical models and the discovery of interesting sources. Detection of individual sources from the low redshift universe can be complemented with the detection of a stochastic background, primarily to develop a better understanding of the evolution of astrophysical populations. Also, searches for stochastic backgrounds provide the only feasible way to look for unknown persistent sources. Precise measurement of the astrophysical stochastic background will be crucial to probe the primordial stochastic background. These ambitious science goals will, however, require multi-band observations, including space-based detectors. In particular, augmenting the ground-based detectors with a deci-Hertz observatory can skyrocket the scientific potential, and India is well poised to lead this endeavour.