Virgo gravitational wave detector
The work of the Gravity Group is conducted under the aegis of the Virgo collaboration, which similarily to Virgo itself is done in cooperation with the LIGO experiment. Both experiments focus on detecting gravitational waves emitted by inspiraling black-holes (compact binaries), thus proving not only the descriptive nature of Einstein's theory of general relativity, but also it's predictive nature. Above providing the neccessary theoretical background for the experimentalists, multiple on-going studies are conducted about other phenomena that could be experimentally observed.
Theories are tested through simulation, which when agreed on are provided as input for the experimentalists. These generated waveforms need to be as accurate as possible, and due to the imminent detector upgrade and signal acquisition they must be generated in the fastest manner possible.
To address these issues, there are three simulation softwares under development, all of which are already in use: CBWaves and GridRipper both approach from a simulation point of view, whereas GWTools focuses more on data analysis.