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. The group scientific coordinator is C. Herdeiro.
Ema Valente successfully finished her Physics M.Sc. at Aveiro University, on December 20th 2017, by defending a thesis with title "A simple model of exotic compact objects: interaction with a scalar field". This thesis was supervised by Gr@v researcher C. Herdeiro and examined by Prof. Luis Crispino, from the U. Federal do Pará, Brazil. Well done Ema!
The fourth general assembley of the Portuguese Relativity and Gravitation Society (SPRG) ellected the following new officers: C. Herdeiro (president), J. Natário (vice-president), V. Cardoso (Treasurer), J. Lemos (General Assembley President), F. Mena (First Secretary), J. Costa (Second secretary). These officers appear in the above photograph presenting the 2017 Alberto Prize to M. Zilhão. The remaining officer is J. Rocha ("Fiscal Único").
The X Black Holes workshop took place at Aveiro University on 18-19 December 2017. It gathered almost 100 scientists discussing black holes from many different perspectives. Besides 63 oral communications, the workshop also included the fourth General Assembley of the Portuguese Relativity and Gravitation Society (SPRG) and a special session celebrating the 60th anniversary of Prof. J. S. Lemos.
The kick off meeting of the FunFiCO RISE project took place on December 20th at Aveiro University. This is a Marie Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange partnership between Aveiro University (coordinator), Sheffield University (UK), UFPa (Brazil), UNAM (Mexico) and Valencia University (Spain).
Miguel Zilhão, a former PhD student at Gr@v, was the winner of the 2017 Portuguese Society on Relativity and Gravitation's (SPRG) Alberto prize. The prize was awarded on December 19th 2017, during the general assembly of the SPRG.
Gr@v members P. Cunha and C. Herdeiro visited Kindai University in Osaka, Japan, hosted by Prof. Akihiro Ishibashi, within a Marie Curie RISE partnership that includes both Aveiro U. and Kindai U. (StronGrHEP project). The photo shows a delightful dinner with collegues from Osaka City University, including Hideki Hishihara, Ken-ichi Nakao and Hirotaka Yoshino.
In a remarkable work published in Physical Review Letters (PRL) as an Editor's suggestion, William East and Frans Pretorius (E&P) studied the non-linear growth of the superradiant instability. In a subsequent paper to appear also in PRL, Gr@v members C. Herdeiro and E. Radu showed that the endpoint matches hairy black holes discovered by the Gr@v team.
Gr@v members P. Cunha and C. Herdeiro were amongst the participants of the 27th workshop on General Relativity and Gravitation in Japan (JGRG 27). Herdeiro was one of the invited speakers.
Five of the ground-breaking gravitational wave detections by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration have been interpreted as black hole collisions forming a more massive black hole. It is hard to demonstrate conclusively that these objects are indeed black holes, and there is a lively debate on the intriguing possibility that other, more exotic alternatives could explain the observations. In an article published in Physical Review Letters, Gr@v members P. Cunha and C.
Alexandre Pombo successfully finished his Physics M.Sc. at Aveiro University, on October 10th 2017, by defending a thesis with title "Q-balls spectroscopy and construction of boson stars". This thesis was supervised by Gr@v researchers and examined by Prof. Yves Brihaye, from the University of Mons, Belgium. Well done Alexandre!