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. In January 2025 colleagues from the U. Algarve joined CIDMA and the group.
The Essay "How fast can a black hole rotate?", by C. Herdeiro and E. Radu, was selected for an "Honorable Mention" in the Gravity Research Foundation 2015 Awards for Essays on Gravitation. It is the second consecutive year an essay from our group gets this distinction. The first prize was awarded to the Nobel Laureate Gerard 't Hooft, for the essay "Local Conformal Symmetry: the Missing Symmetry Component for Space and Time".
Gr@v master student Raul Costa has been granted a place in the prestigious CERN summer student programme 2015 edition. Raul will be spending two months at CERN in a historical and exciting moment when the first data from the high energy runs of the LHC will start being produced. Watch out for the new particles Raul! And congratulations!
Gr@v postdoctoral researcher Jai Grover, who has been a member of the group since 2012, has accepted a research fellow position with the European Space Agency. While there he will perform research and monitor new developments in fundamental physics that might have implications for present and future ESA missions. Congratulations Jai!
Helgi Rúnarsson, a graduate student at Gr@v, was the top ranked student in the call for PhD grants of the MAP-Fis joint doctoral program of Minho, Aveiro and Porto Universities. Well done Helgi!
Gr@v Ph.D. student Flávio Coelho successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis with title "Radiadion from a D-dimensional collision of gravitational shock waves" on February 20th 2015. Congratulations Flávio!
According to Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Knowledge, the Gr@v paper "Kerr black holes with scalar hair" got "enough citations since September/October 2014 to be placed amongst the 1% top cited papers in its academic field."
A large review paper, "Testing General Relativity with past and future Astrophysical observations", arXiv:1501.07271, has been made public, prepared as a Topical Review for CQG. The review includes contributions from many international experts, including from our group, and was led by Emanuele Berti. Thank you Emanuele for pushing this team effort!
A special issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics D (IJMPD, volume 23, number 12, 2014) has been published, with a set of selected essays from the Gravity Research Foundation 2014 essay competition, including a contribution from Gr@v researchers.
Here, the numerical data described in the paper "Construction and physical properties of Kerr black holes with scalar hair", arXiv:1501.04319 [gr-qc], is made available for public use.
This paper is an invited contribution to the Focus Issue on "Black holes and fundamental fields" to appear in Classical and Quantum Gravity, Edited by Paolo Pani and Helvi Witek.
2015 marks the centennial of the General Theory of Relativity (GR), presented by Albert Einstein in 1915. Motivated by this celebration, understanding that GR is an important part of the scientific world heritage and recognizing the growing international influence of Portuguese researchers working in this area, the "Portuguese Society of Relativity and Gravitation" (SPRG) was formally established in 2015.