Projects

Recent detections of gravitational waves herald a new era where
invisible black holes and neutron stars can be discovered throughout
the Universe. Similar to light, gravitational waves can be distorted by
massive objects between the observer and the source, i.e.
gravitational lensing. Neglecting the effects of lensing can lead to
missing gravitational-wave events or a biased measurement the
source. In particular, in the ...

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 ...

This thesis investigates different facets of black holes that will come under the observational scrutiny of gravitational wave astronomy. Specifically, it studies how the black hole multipolar structure, the black hole spectrum, and a near-maximal black hole angular momentum affect the dynamics of binary systems and the associated gravitational wave emission.

Since the first detection of gravitational waves (GWs) by the LIGO detectors of a binary black hole merger in 2015, many more binary mergers have been detected. A new generation of GW detectors will be build, whose improved sensitivity will allow the detection of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe). Those detections can result in a better understanding of CCSNe, interaction between the fundamental forces of nature in extreme ...

The holographic Swampland The Swampland paradigm in theoretical high energy physics has revised the way we think about string theory phenomenology. One of the most pressing issues within the Swampland program is whether semi-realistic string theory vacua are possible. Such vacua require at least a stabilisation of all moduli in such a way that the compact extra dimensions are very small with respect to the large ...