APS congratulates Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish, and Kip S. Thorne for winning the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves." Detection of the gravitational wave signal, resulting from the merger of two black holes, was the culmination of more than four decades of effort by researchers with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation. Eight key Physical Review articles related to their research have been made free-to-read.
Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102
GW151226: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a 22-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence
B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 241103
GW170104: Observation of a 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence at Redshift 0.2
B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific and Virgo Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 221101
Tests of General Relativity with GW150914
B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific and Virgo Collaborations)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 221101
GW150914: The Advanced LIGO Detectors in the Era of First Discoveries
B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 131103
Observing gravitational-wave transient GW150914 with minimal assumptions
B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. D 93, 122004
Properties of the Binary Black Hole Merger GW150914
B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 241102
Directly comparing GW150914 with numerical solutions of Einstein’s equations for binary black hole coalescence
B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. D 94, 064035