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.
According to Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Knowledge, the Gr@v paper "Kerr black holes with scalar hair" got "enough citations since September/October 2014 to be placed amongst the 1% top cited papers in its academic field."
A large review paper, "Testing General Relativity with past and future Astrophysical observations", arXiv:1501.07271, has been made public, prepared as a Topical Review for CQG. The review includes contributions from many international experts, including from our group, and was led by Emanuele Berti. Thank you Emanuele for pushing this team effort!
A special issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics D (IJMPD, volume 23, number 12, 2014) has been published, with a set of selected essays from the Gravity Research Foundation 2014 essay competition, including a contribution from Gr@v researchers.
Here, the numerical data described in the paper "Construction and physical properties of Kerr black holes with scalar hair", arXiv:1501.04319 [gr-qc], is made available for public use.
This paper is an invited contribution to the Focus Issue on "Black holes and fundamental fields" to appear in Classical and Quantum Gravity, Edited by Paolo Pani and Helvi Witek.
2015 marks the centennial of the General Theory of Relativity (GR), presented by Albert Einstein in 1915. Motivated by this celebration, understanding that GR is an important part of the scientific world heritage and recognizing the growing international influence of Portuguese researchers working in this area, the "Portuguese Society of Relativity and Gravitation" (SPRG) was formally established in 2015.
Within the reorganization of the Portuguese research units promoted by FCT, Gr@v will become part, from Jan 2015, of the Centre for Research and Development in Mathematics and Applications (CIDMA), a research unit based at the University of Aveiro. Gr@v will integrate CIDMA as a new research group -- Gravitational Geometry and Dynamics.
The VII Black Holes workshop took place at Aveiro University from 18-19 December 2014. With over seventy participants from fifteen countries, and a scientific program with 48 talks, this edition continued the growing participation and interest of the international community in this series of workshops, as well as a state of the art review of this exciting field of research. The next edition will take place at IST-Lisbon in December 2015.
Planets orbiting very close to their host stars have been found, some of them on the verge of tidal disruption. The ellipsoidal shape of these planets can significantly differ from a sphere, which modifies the transit light curves.
Gr@v researcher Alexandre Correia, has just obtained his Habilitation (`Agregação') after presenting a report on `Astronomy and Astrophysics' and a review on his research work with title `Detection and Dynamics of multi-planet systems'. Congratulations Alexandre!
Our group is participating in the organization of the II Physics Meeting in Amazonia, to take place at Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, Brazil, from 24-28 November 2014. This is a joint meeting of researchers in various topics including gravitational physics and condensed matter. See a beautiful movie about the meeting here.