Production and potential detection of electromagnetic radiation from gravitational waves

This talk presents the possibility of observing very low frequency (VLF) electromagnetic radiation produced from the vacuum by gravitational waves. We give a brief review of the calculations leading to the possibility of vacuum conversion of gravitational waves into electromagnetic waves and we show how this process evades the well-known prohibition against particle production from gravitational waves. Using Newman-Penrose scalars, we estimate the luminosity of this proposed electromagnetic counterpart radiation coming from gravitational waves produced by neutron star oscillations. The detection of electromagnetic counterpart radiation would provide an indirect way of observing gravitational radiation with future spacecraft missions, especially lunar orbiting probes.