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.
Two 4-month post-doctoral grants are open within the project 2024.05617.CERN, "Towards precision tests of ultralight dark matter with imaging and gravitational waves". Applications should be submitted between 20 June 2025 and 10 July 2025. More info in the attached files and the Euraxess site.
C. Herdeiro was one of the invited speakers of the Varna conference on Black Holes, Neutron Stars and Gravitational Waves.
On June 4th, C. Herdeiro delivered an outreach talk on gravitational waves for nearly one hundred high school teachers in the fabulous space Miguel Torga, near the house where the writer and poet was born, in S. Martinho de Anta, near Vila Real. A fantastic organization by a wonderful group of dedicated teachers!
We discuss recent results on using boson stars with a solitonic potential as models of ultracompact objects, which could mimic black holes in such phenomenology as VLBI images and gravitational wave signals.
Our group is co-organizing the VII Amazonian Symposium on Physics, in Belém do Pará, Brazil, 22-26 September 2025, also integrated in the NewFunFiCO network.