Gr@v is a team of researchers, based at the Mathematics and Physics Department of Aveiro University, Portugal, working on strong gravity and high energy physics. The group was established in 2010. In January 2015 Gr@v integrated the FCT funded CIDMA research unit (UIDB/04106/2020 and UIDP/04106/2020), as the Gravitational Geometry and Dynamics research group. In January 2025 colleagues from the U. Algarve joined CIDMA and the group.
Gr@v researchers have found that there are only two equilibrium possibilities for the spin of black hole binaries, and that they are similar to the equilibria observed for the spin of the Moon, which was identified by Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1693. The results were published this week in MNRAS Letters.
This year's Chilean school on gravitation took place in Concepción, from 4-8 January, focused on black holes and solitons. One of the invited lecturers was Gr@v member C. Herdeiro, delivering a five lectures course on "Asymptotically flat black holes with scalar hair in four spacetime dimensions."
Exactly one hundred years after Einstein's completion of the general theory of relativity, Gr@v gathered some collaborators and friends to celebrate Gr@vity!
The cover of the Physical Review Letters Vol. 115, issue 21 (November 20th, 2015), exhibits one of the figures of the Gr@v paper Shadows of Kerr black holes with scalar hair [Pedro V. P. Cunha et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 211102 (2015)] showing the lensing of a boson star with a light ring.
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has awarded one of the 2015 prizes for stimulating research to Gr@v Ph.D. student Pedro Cunha, distinguishing his work/project on black hole shadows. Congratulations Pedro!
Pedro Cunha did his undergraduate in Physics and M.Sc in Astrophysics, both at the University of Coimbra. His M.Sc. thesis was already done within Gr@v under the supervision of C. Herdeiro. Pedro is pursuing his Ph.D. studies at the University of Aveiro and IST-Lisbon.
The paper "Shadows of Kerr black holes with scalar hair" by P. Cunha, C. Herdeiro, E. Radu and H. Rúnarsson has been accepted in Physical Review Letters. This work shows Kerr black holes with scalar hair can exhibit new types of shadows in black hole physics. Observing black hole shadows is the primary target of the Event Horizon Telescope.
Gr@v is a partner of the recently approved "Strong Gravity and High Energy Physics" Marie Curie RISE (Research and Innovation Staff Exchange) action, within the Horizon 2020 European framework. This network has a lifetime of 4 years, starting in Jan 2016 and connects 8 nodes in 7 countries, being coordinated by Prof. Ulrich Sperhake and Cambridge University.
The V global meeting of the Numerical Relativity and High Energy Physics Marie Curie IRSES action, took place in Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, Brazil, from 28 September -2 October 2015.
Thank you Luis Carlos Crispino for the stimulating meeting in the beautiful Amazonia.
Living Reviews in Relativity has been one of the most prestigous journals in the field of Gravitation. After interrupting its activity in September 2014, it was recently acquired by Springer and has now resumed publication with the new review articles: "Exploring New Physics Frontiers Through Numerical Relativity" co-authored by our group.
Pedro Cunha presented his M.Sc thesis on September 21st 2015, on the topic of "Black Hole Shadows". A student at the University of Coimbra, Pedro chose to do his M.Sc. thesis within Gr@v. His impressive work led him to be awarded a 20 (out of 20) for his thesis, the first ever in the Master programme he attended, and to write an original paper on "Shadows of Kerr black holes with scalar hair".