Projects

Some of the most outstanding problems in modern theoretical high energy physics are related to the puzzles arising in the physics of black holes. More than 40 years ago Bekenstein and Hawking discovered that black holes have an entropy proportional to the area of their horizon. A major theoretical challenge is to account for the microstates responsible for this entropy. String theory is a leading theory of quantum gravity that has been used ...

General Relativity (GR) is broadly accepted as the correct description of the gravitational interaction when the curvature of spacetime is relatively low, but modifications of this theory are expected to arise at high energies. In an effective-field-theory approach, such modifications can be captured by introducing higher-curvature corrections in the Einstein's field equations. There has been a great interest in the literature in order to ...

As a quantum theory of gravity, string theory is expected to answer many outstanding questions regarding the intersection of Einstein's classical gravitational theory with the quantum field theory of the Large Hadron Collider. A few of these questions are: the black hole "information paradox"; the cosmological constant; and the holographic nature of gauge theories.

The information paradox relates to the entropy of black holes and the ...

Recent advances in quantum gravity challenge the classical viewpoint that black hole horizons shroud their inner structure. However, there is no consensus on the scale of possible quantum corrections to classical General Relativity. This undermines the scientific potential to probe quantum gravity of current large observational programs. With this project, I will develop quantum gravity models of black holes and their astrophysical ...

My research focuses on the quantum modifications of black holes that lead to preservation of information and avoid the black hole paradoxes. In particular, I study whether known string theory solutions, known as fuzzballs, are viable representatives of black hole microstates. I couple this research with examining the nature of non-locality in an effective theory of quantum gravity. I use the AdS/CFT duality as a controlled playground in which ...

Gravitational waves are gravity's messenger - propagating ripples in the fabric of space and time generated by the motion of large masses, such as black holes, and indeed by the evolution of the universe itself. Gravitational waves are very faint but extremely clean signals of some of the most mysterious and distant processes in our universe. Our first direct detection of gravitational waves earlier this year thus opens up an exciting new era ...

Two of the most important outstanding problems in fundamental physics are describing the dynamics of strongly interacting quantum field theories (QFTs) and understanding the mysteries of black hole physics and quantum gravity. These two puzzles are deeply connected through the holographic correspondence, which relates the physics of quantum gravity to that of QFT in one less dimension. Studying this duality in detail enhances our ...

The project concerns the waveform modelling of the slow inspiral and coalescence of stellar or intermediate mass black holes into intermediate and supermassive black holes, known as IMRACs and EMRIs. EMRIs are prime sources for LISA as they lie entirely in the LISA frequency band of observation. Their orbits are generic and highly relativistic, displaying extreme forms of periastron and orbital plane precession, and executing 10^3 – 10^5 ...

Experimental and theoretical results of the past decades suggest that quantum gravity can influence large-scale phenomena in a non-trivial and puzzling way. Dark energy which contributes roughly 68% of the energy of the universe has eluded our understanding for this very reason since its discovery in 1998. In the same spirit, Hawking radiation which emanates from black holes has also left physicists perplexed over the past decades due to its ...