Gazeta de Física, the Bulletin of the Portuguese Physics Society, has devoted a special issue to Black Holes, with guest editors. C. Herdeiro and J. S. Lemos, featuring 12 papers from scientists working in Portugal on this exciting and timely topic.
We establish that boundary degrees of freedom associated with a generic co-dimension one null surface in D dimensional pure Einstein gravity naturally admit a thermodynamical description. We expect the null surface thermodynamics to universally follow as a result of the diffeomorphism invariance of the theory, not relying on other special features of the null surface.
A call for two 10 months research grants in Strong Gravity/High Energy Physics, for M.Sc. holders enrolled in a doctoral programme at Aveiro University, within the research grant “Testing the Kerr hypothesis with gravitational waves and lensing", PTDC/FIS-AST/3041/2020, is open from 1 to 20 December 2021. See attached document for details (in Portuguese) or the Euraxess announcement (in Portuguese and English) here.
Nico Sanchis-Gual was one of the 8 selected researchers for a junior grant, nationwide, within 74 applicants in the Physical Sciences panel, in the fourth individual call for scientific employment stimulus, promoted by FCT. Congratulations Nico!
Our group had the pleasure to host the visits of Prof. Tiberiu Harko and Prof. Miguel Angel Sanchis Lozano, who presented stimulating seminars on modified gravity and particle physics/cosmology.
Gravity may be an emergent phenomenon instead of a fundamental force. This may lead to a viable theory for quantum gravity. The basic concepts of emergent gravity will be introduced. It will be shown that the requirement of energy conservation through off-shell process generates a gravity-like force. The necessary conditions for gravity to emerge from QFT will be discussed.
Our group coordinated the "Numerical Relativity and High Energy Physics" IRSES network (2012-2015). Here is a list of the global network meetings organized: