Alexandre Pombo successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, entitled "Black holes and solitonic objects with bosonic fields" on April 8 2022. The Ph.D. committee included Arnaldo Martins (President, UA), Daniela Doneva (Tubingen), Yves Brihaye (Mons), Carolina Benone (UFPA), Pedro Avelino (IA, UP) and Carlos Herdeiro (UA, advisor). The thesis was co-advised by Eugen Radu. Congratulations Alexandre!
Topological solitons play an important role in many areas of Physics. In some cases they constitute the {\em normal modes} of field theories in the strong coupling regime. There is a class of topological solitons that are special. They are solutions of first order differential equations (self-dual eqs.) that also solve the second order Euler-Lagrange equations.
The 12th Iberian Gravitational Waves Meeting will take place at the University of Minho, in Braga, from 6-8 June 2022, co-organized by our group. More information in the event's webpage.
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are by far the most extensively studied class of cold dark matter (CDM) as the correct dark matter abundance is easily reproduced with cross sections around the weak scale. They have been extensively searched for by many experiments (direct and indirect detection, and colliders) with no success.
Jorge Delgado successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, entitled "Spinning Black holes with scalar hair and horizonless compact objects within and beyond General Relativity" on March 24 2022. The Ph.D. committee included José Pedro (President, UA), Betti Hartmann (UCL), Yasha Shnir (JINR), Luis Crispino (UFPA), Lara Sousa (IA, UP) and Carlos Herdeiro (UA, advisor). The thesis was co-advised by Eugen Radu. Congratulations Jorge!
Gr@v made an appearance in Portuguese National TV, in the show UAU, "Science without limits", co-produced by RTP and the University of Aveiro. Episode 14 was devoted to space, and our group talked about gravitational waves and the possibility they can give us information on dark matter, based on this article.
A call for a 1 year postdoctoral grant in Strong Gravity or High Energy Physics, to integrate the Gravitational Geometry and Dynamics Group within the CIDMA research Unit, is open from 5 to 20 April 2021. See attached document for details: call in Portuguese and English.
Starting from March 2022, C. Herdeiro was appointed member of the editorial board (associate editor) of the European Physical Journal C (EPJC), for the section "Theoretical Physics III: Quantum Field Theory and Gravity - Fundamental and Formal Aspects". EPJC is a leading international journal on this research topic with over 2M downloads in 2021 and an impact factor of 4.590 (2020). See UA coverage here.
Our group coordinated the "Numerical Relativity and High Energy Physics" IRSES network (2012-2015). Here is a list of the global network meetings organized: