The group's research on strong gravity involves finding analytical and numerical solutions of Einstein's theory of general relativity, and many of its extensions, either in vacuum or coupled to various types of matter. For our latest developments/activities in this area, please see the listing at the end of this article.
The prime examples of (relativistic) strong gravitational systems are Black Holes. They are truly unifying objects of all physics. The understanding of their formation and dynamics requires the laws of all four fundamental forces, and their physics is relevant not only for astrophysics and cosmology but for a variety of topics within high energy physics.
See here a movie made by the COST action `Black holes in a violent universe', in which our group participates, for a visual overview of different types of black holes.
When the bosonic sector of the electroweak theory is minimally coupled to General Relativity, magnetic Reissner-Nordström black holes become unstable below a critical horizon size.
The NewFunFiCO network co-organized the XV School of the Division of Gravitation and Mathematical Physics of the Mexican physics society, that took place in Cancun, Mexico, in the first week of November 2025. Wonderful talks and scientific discussions in a wonderful venue!
We discuss the existence and locations of light rings in the spacetime of a Kerr black hole immersed in a swirling universe– in other words, the immersion of a rotating black hole into a rotating background. As the spin-spin interaction between the black hole and the background breaks the upper-lower hemisphere symmetry, it allows for interesting new features.
Gr@v PhD student Manuel Mariano is visiting Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, US, for a month. There he presented a seminar entitled “There and back again: outspiralling motion in non-Kerr compact objects”.