New frontiers in Gravitational Wave Astronomy

Project description

I am looking for PhD students interested in gravitational wave astronomy, to work in either data analysis or theoretical modelling, or at their intersection. Projects could focus on one of the following themes

1. The effect of astrophysical environments on gravitational wave sources. Standard GW astronomy assumes that sources (black hole or stellar binaries) evolve in vacuum. However, our Universe is filled with matter, and nothing in it exists in complete isolation. Our goal will be to accurately model the effect of realistic (and exotic) environments, identify overlooked effects, and make forecasts for the future space GW mission LISA or for near-future pulsar timing arrays.

2. Perturbed black holes. A perturbed black hole is the unavoidable result of binary mergers, currently our main source of GWs. Thanks to new theoretical tools, we will produce more accurate models of GW signals, explore how these perturbations behave in extremal black holes, beyond general relativity or in the presence of exotic fields, and analyse numerical simulations and data to put new ideas to the test.