December 16, 2016
Equal-mass binaries correspond to a discontinuous limit in the spin precession equations. A new constant of motion pops up, which can be exploited to study the dynamics. This is a really neat calculation done with Jakub, a Cambridge undergraduate student. Also, … Continue reading
September 2, 2016
Today I’ve defended my PhD at the University of Cambridge! My thesis is titled “Source modelling at the dawn of gravitational-wave astronomy” (with two l’s, British spelling here!). Huge thanks Uli and everyone else for the journey!
June 14, 2016
Black hole kicks are cool: powerful (up to thousands of km/s!) recoils that black holes receive following a merger. Here we show these events might leave an imprint on the emitted gravitational waves, which is potentially detectable by future interferometers. … Continue reading
May 3, 2016
Here we present my numerical code precession, which implements our multi-timescale way to look at spinning black-hole binaries. The paper has a detailed description of the various functions as well as lots of examples. Update: typos in Eq. (36-37) have been … Continue reading
February 22, 2016
Here we present 1+1 numerical-relativity simulation of stellar collapse in scalar-tensor theories, where gravity is mediated by the usual metric coupled to an additional scalar field. Bottom line: you can test General Relativity with supernovae explosions! Davide Gerosa, Ulrich Sperhake, Christian D. … Continue reading
July 20, 2015
This is a follow up of arXiv:1403.7147, just done better. Instead of overlaps, we do real injections in LIGO parameter-estimation codes to show that spin-orbit resonances are indeed detectable. Daniele Trifirò, Richard O’Shaughnessy, Davide Gerosa, Emanuele Berti, Michael Kesden, Tyson Littenberg, Ulrich … Continue reading
July 9, 2015
I wrote a post for The Birth of an Idea, which is a really beautiful blog collecting insights on how scientists start their science. Thanks Vitor for the opportunity to contribute! Here is my post: Bikes and Colorful Pieces An … Continue reading
June 30, 2015
Here we study the stability of black-hole binaries with spins (anti)aligned with the orbital angular momentum. Aligned configurations are points of equilibrium, but are they stable? If the heavier black-hole is aligned and the lighter one is anti-aligned, this turns … Continue reading
June 10, 2015
Detailed analysis of 2PN black-hole binary spin precession using multi-timescale methods. Follow-up of the Letter arXiv:1411.0674, this paper contains the full calculation and the description of the underlying phenomenology. Davide Gerosa, Michael Kesden, Ulrich Sperhake, Emanuele Berti, Richard O’Shaughnessy.Physical Review … Continue reading
May 27, 2015
What happens if you throw a scalar field into General Relativity? And if you throw more than one? Here is a paper on the phenomenology of neutron stars in theories with more than one scalar field coupled to gravity. Michael … Continue reading
March 23, 2015
Supermassive black holes in binaries and their accretion discs… Spins align on some timescale, but migration also takes place. Do gas discs have enough time to align the spins? Well, the secret is the mass ratio: light secondaries might prevent … Continue reading
January 28, 2015
A massive review on testing gravity, which came out of a nice meeting we had at University of Mississippi in January 2014. See the numbers. Emanuele Berti, et al. (53 authors incl. Davide Gerosa).Classical and Quantum Gravity 32 (2015) 24, 243001.arXiv:1501.07274 [gr-qc].
November 3, 2014
2PN black-hole binary spin precession works exactly like Kepler’s two-body problem. Not kidding: just define effective potentials and divide the phase space into morphologies. The only things you need are a few timescales to play with. Michael Kesden, Davide Gerosa, … Continue reading
May 27, 2014
These are my proceedings of the 3rd Session of the Sant Cugat Forum on Astrophysics, held in beautiful Sant Cugat, near Barcelona on April 22-25, 2014. My contribution is this paper: have a look if you want to know more about … Continue reading
May 8, 2014
Black-hole kicks are powerful. I mean, really powerful. They can even eject supermassive black holes from the heavier galaxies in our Universe. And then these galaxies are left “empty”… Davide Gerosa, Alberto Sesana.Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 446 (2015) … Continue reading
March 27, 2014
Spinning black-hole binaries might belong to two spin-orbit resonances, or families. Can you tell them apart using gravitational-wave observations? Spoiler: yes! Bonus note: check out the title in v1 on the arxiv… Davide Gerosa, Richard O’Shaughnessy, Michael Kesden, Emanuele Berti, … Continue reading