Gr@v is a team of researchers, based at the Mathematics and Physics Department of Aveiro University, Portugal, working on strong gravity and high energy physics. The group was established in 2010. In January 2015 Gr@v integrated the FCT funded CIDMA research unit (UIDB/04106/2020 and UIDP/04106/2020), as the Gravitational Geometry and Dynamics research group. The group scientific coordinator is C. Herdeiro.
The paper "Shadows of Kerr black holes with scalar hair" by P. Cunha, C. Herdeiro, E. Radu and H. Rúnarsson has been accepted in Physical Review Letters. This work shows Kerr black holes with scalar hair can exhibit new types of shadows in black hole physics. Observing black hole shadows is the primary target of the Event Horizon Telescope.
Gr@v is a partner of the recently approved "Strong Gravity and High Energy Physics" Marie Curie RISE (Research and Innovation Staff Exchange) action, within the Horizon 2020 European framework. This network has a lifetime of 4 years, starting in Jan 2016 and connects 8 nodes in 7 countries, being coordinated by Prof. Ulrich Sperhake and Cambridge University.
The V global meeting of the Numerical Relativity and High Energy Physics Marie Curie IRSES action, took place in Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, Brazil, from 28 September -2 October 2015.
Thank you Luis Carlos Crispino for the stimulating meeting in the beautiful Amazonia.
Living Reviews in Relativity has been one of the most prestigous journals in the field of Gravitation. After interrupting its activity in September 2014, it was recently acquired by Springer and has now resumed publication with the new review articles: "Exploring New Physics Frontiers Through Numerical Relativity" co-authored by our group.
Pedro Cunha presented his M.Sc thesis on September 21st 2015, on the topic of "Black Hole Shadows". A student at the University of Coimbra, Pedro chose to do his M.Sc. thesis within Gr@v. His impressive work led him to be awarded a 20 (out of 20) for his thesis, the first ever in the Master programme he attended, and to write an original paper on "Shadows of Kerr black holes with scalar hair".
To celebrate the centenial of General Relativity and simulataneously celebrate five years of the Gravitation Group at the University of Aveiro (Gr@v), established in the Fall 2010, Gr@v will organize a two days event, on 25-26 November 2015. This event will also mark the closing of the "Numerical Relativity and High Energy Physics" Marie Curie IRSES action, an international partnership which was coordinated by our group that ran over the period 2012-2015. Finally, the event will also be integrated in the IDPASC doctoral programme.
The chaotic rotation of Pluto's small moons has been explained by Gr@v researchers as a natural consequence of the gravitational dynamics in Pluto's system (A&A Letter).
The article "Knotty inflation and the dimensionality of spacetime", co-authored by Gr@v member João Rosa, was recently featured in the popular science magazine New Scientist, with comments by Prof. Alan Guth.
For General Relativity's (GR) centennial, Scientific American examined a year’s worth of the GR literature. The study includes all papers (2435) uploaded to the gr-qc arXiv in 2014. Gr@v's paper Kerr black holes with scalar hair appears as the second most cited paper, by other authors, since publication through the middle of 2015.
The proceedings of the seventh edition of the Black Holes Workshop (VIIBHW), held at the University of Aveiro in 18-19 December 2014, have now been published as the August 2015 special issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics D (Volume 24, Number 09, August 2015), including 25 contributed articles and a preface by the editors.