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.
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”.
Romain Gervalle (Ph.D. U. Tours, France, 2025) and TianXiang Ma (M.Sc, Lanzhou U., China, 2024) have joined our group in October 2025. Ana Bokulic (Ph.D. U. Zagreb, Croatia, 2024), already a group member, also renewed her group membership into 2026. Great to have you in the group!
On Oct. 22nd 2025 we had the visit of João Dinis Álvares, who completed his M.Sc. at IST-Lisbon. João gave an interesting talk on the evolution of scalar fields around black holes and also shared with us that he decided to study physics after an outreach talk by Gr@v members, in Braga, back in 2017. Thank you João, for the kind words and all the best for your Ph.D. abroad!