I am very excited to welcome Matthew Mould in my research group. Matt is starting his Ph.D. with me in Birmingham. We already have too many ideas…
September 20, 2019
Category Archives: Birmingham
September 17, 2019
Machine-learning interpolation of population-synthesis simulations to interpret gravitational-wave observations: a case study
Gravitational-wave astronomy is, seems obvious to say, about doing astronomy with gravitational waves. One has gravitational-wave observations (thanks LIGO and Virgo!) on hand and astrophysical models on the other hand. The more closely these two sides interact, the more we … Continue reading
September 13, 2019
Black holes in the low mass gap: Implications for gravitational wave observations
What’s in between neutron stars and black holes? It looks like neutron stars have a maximum mass of about 2 solar masses while black holes have a minimum mass of about 5. So what’s in between? That’s the popular issue … Continue reading
June 21, 2019
Summer research fun
This summer I’ll be working with two undergraduate research students. Luca Reali is finishing his master at my alma mater (University of Milan, Italy) and is visiting Birmingham with a scholarship from the HPC Europa 3 cluster. Daria Gangardt just … Continue reading
June 14, 2019
Escape speed of stellar clusters from multiple-generation black-hole mergers in the upper mass gap
Funny things happen in supernova explosions. Funny and complicated. If the star is too massive, the explosion is unstable. The black hole it formed it not as massive as it could have been. In gravitational-wave astronomy, this means that we … Continue reading
June 12, 2019
Gravitational-wave detection rates for compact binaries formed in isolation: LIGO/Virgo O3 and beyond.
LIGO and Virgo are up and running like crazy. They started their third observing run (O3) and in just a few months doubled the catalogs of observing events. And there’s so much more coming! In this paper we try to … Continue reading
May 30, 2019
Are stellar-mass black-hole binaries too quiet for LISA?
Spoiler alert: this paper is a bit sad. Stellar-mass black-hole binaries are now detected by LIGO on a weekly basis. It would be really cool if LISA (a future space mission targeting low-frequencies gravitational waves) could see them as well. … Continue reading
May 28, 2019
Constraining the fraction of binary black holes formed in isolation and young star clusters with gravitational-wave data
Where do black holes come from? Sounds like a scify book title, but it’s real. These days, that’s actually the million dollar question in gravitational-wave astronomy. LIGO sees (lots of!) black holes in binaries, and those data encode information on … Continue reading
May 24, 2019
Surrogate models for precessing binary black hole simulations with unequal masses
Surrogate models are the best of both worlds. Numerical-relativity simulations are accurate but take forever. Waveform models have larger errors but can be computed cheaply, which means they can be used in the real world and compared with data. Surrogates … Continue reading
March 19, 2019
Bham, here I come
We moved (back) to the UK. I’m now a lecturer at the University of Birmingham (which is equivalent to assistant professor in the US). Really excited to start this new adventure! My group is part of the Birmingham Institute for Gravitational … Continue reading
February 4, 2019
Multiband gravitational-wave event rates and stellar physics
The prospect of multiband gravitational-wave astronomy is so so so exciting (I mean, really!). So exciting that we want to make sure once again it’s true; and this is today’s paper. Multiband means seeing the same black hole binary with … Continue reading
November 14, 2018
Wide nutation: binary black-hole spins repeatedly oscillating from full alignment to full anti-alignment
Latest in the series of our spin-precession papers, here we found a thing that was worthy of a new name: wide nutation (we had wide precession before, but this is better). These are black-hole binary configurations where the angle between any … Continue reading
June 29, 2018
Optimizing LIGO with LISA forewarnings to improve black-hole spectroscopy
LISA is going to be amazing: supermassive black-holes, galactic white dwarfs, EMRIs… Besides all of that, LISA can help us doing LIGO’s science better. Some LIGO sources (notably, things like GW150914) will show up in LISA years in advance. LISA … Continue reading