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.
To celebrate the centenial of General Relativity and simulataneously celebrate five years of the Gravitation Group at the University of Aveiro (Gr@v), established in the Fall 2010, Gr@v will organize a two days event, on 25-26 November 2015. This event will also mark the closing of the "Numerical Relativity and High Energy Physics" Marie Curie IRSES action, an international partnership which was coordinated by our group that ran over the period 2012-2015. Finally, the event will also be integrated in the IDPASC doctoral programme.
The chaotic rotation of Pluto's small moons has been explained by Gr@v researchers as a natural consequence of the gravitational dynamics in Pluto's system (A&A Letter).
The article "Knotty inflation and the dimensionality of spacetime", co-authored by Gr@v member João Rosa, was recently featured in the popular science magazine New Scientist, with comments by Prof. Alan Guth.
For General Relativity's (GR) centennial, Scientific American examined a year’s worth of the GR literature. The study includes all papers (2435) uploaded to the gr-qc arXiv in 2014. Gr@v's paper Kerr black holes with scalar hair appears as the second most cited paper, by other authors, since publication through the middle of 2015.
The proceedings of the seventh edition of the Black Holes Workshop (VIIBHW), held at the University of Aveiro in 18-19 December 2014, have now been published as the August 2015 special issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics D (Volume 24, Number 09, August 2015), including 25 contributed articles and a preface by the editors.
Gr@v team at the 14th Marcel Grossmann Meeting, in Rome: (from left to right) M. Wang, H. Rúnarsson, J. C. Degollado (former member), E. Radu, C. Herdeiro, M. Sampaio and J. Rosa, where we have presented ten talks on the various group's research lines.
Under Rome's July hot sun, this workshop could be described modifying Edison's quote: "Science can really be 99% perspiration..."
The IV global meeting of the Numerical Relativity and High Energy Physics Marie Curie IRSES action, took place in "Sapienza University", Rome, Italy, from 7-10 July 2015.
Thank you Leonardo Gualtieri, Paolo Pani and Valeria Ferrari for the stimulating meeting and excellent coffee breaks!
The Essay "How fast can a black hole rotate?", by C. Herdeiro and E. Radu, was selected for an "Honorable Mention" in the Gravity Research Foundation 2015 Awards for Essays on Gravitation. It is the second consecutive year an essay from our group gets this distinction. The first prize was awarded to the Nobel Laureate Gerard 't Hooft, for the essay "Local Conformal Symmetry: the Missing Symmetry Component for Space and Time".
Gr@v master student Raul Costa has been granted a place in the prestigious CERN summer student programme 2015 edition. Raul will be spending two months at CERN in a historical and exciting moment when the first data from the high energy runs of the LHC will start being produced. Watch out for the new particles Raul! And congratulations!
Gr@v postdoctoral researcher Jai Grover, who has been a member of the group since 2012, has accepted a research fellow position with the European Space Agency. While there he will perform research and monitor new developments in fundamental physics that might have implications for present and future ESA missions. Congratulations Jai!