Astrophysics is an area concerning various physical ranging from planetary sized systems, to galactic scale systems and beyond, that intersects various disciplines such as Newtonian dynamics, relativistic physics and particle physics processes.
For our latest developments/activities in this area, please see the listing below at the end of this article.
An exoplanet is a planet outside the Solar System. In the Milky Way galaxy, it is expected that there are many billions of planets (at least one planet, on average, orbiting around each star, resulting in 100–400 billion exoplanets), with many more free-floating planetary-mass bodies orbiting the galaxy directly.
We study the long-term dynamics of known multi-planet systems. This allow us to test the accuracy of the orbital parameters' determinations, as well as to understand how these systems evolved. We also look for the stable zones in the gaps between already-known planets in order to determine where is it possible to locate Earth-like planets.
See here a movie made by the PhD Animation on "Exoplanets Explained", for a review on the main observational methods used to detect exoplanets.
João Rosa was interviewed for Porto Canal's "Mentes que brilham" about his work on stimulated axion decay around primordial black holes as a possible origin for fast radio bursts, recently published in Physical Review Letters. He also gave a related interview to the radio programme "Click" on Antena 1.
The CIDMA Young Doctor Award is a prize for a researcher within 5 years after the PhD, who has made important contributions to his or her research field. The 2018 award is granted to Gr@v member Tjarda Boekholt for his recent achievements in the field of dynamical chaos in astronomical systems. During the annual meeting of CIDMA 2018, Tjarda presented his new numerical N-body code and the ability to obtain reversible solutions to highly chaotic systems.
Recent advances in radio telescopes in sensitivity, response time, and wavelength coverage have opened a wealth of new research opportunities. This is particularly the case for transients, where high sensitivity and rapid response is crucial. I will describe how radio observations of two classes of objects are helping to further our understanding of jet physics.
In a recent paper "Head on collisions of Proca Stars", [arXiv:1806.07779], by N. Sanchis-Gual et al., head-on collisions of exotic compact objects known as "Proca stars" were studied via fully non linear numerical simulations, with the goal of extracting the gravitational wave templates that such exotic objects could produce.
Eclipse timing variation (ETV) analysis of short period binaries is a useful method to detect circumbinary exoplanets.