General Relativity and Astro/physics

My focus

The most important focus of my research

Gravitational wave sources for space-borne observatories

Observing gravitational waves from supermassive black holes will allow to test General Relativity in the strong regime

Go to Gravitational Waves sources for ground-based detectors

Gravitational Waves sources for ground-based detectors

Ripples in space and time from stellar-mass compact objects and black holes.

Go to Multimessenger Astrophysics

Multimessenger Astrophysics

With photons we can see, with gravitational waves, we can hear.

Go to Supermassive Black Holes and Tidal Disruptions of Stars

Supermassive Black Holes and Tidal Disruptions of Stars

A star venturing too close to a supermassive black hole may end up being torn apart.

Go to Stellar Dynamics

Stellar Dynamics

How stars move in dense stellar systems is a much more complex problem that seems, and it is deeply intertwined to a number of complex astrophysical and relativistic phenomena

Go to Dark Matter

Dark Matter

The unknown nature of the dark matter of the Universe and the understanding of gravity are among the more tantalizing problems in modern physics.

Go to Planets

Planets

The formation and evolution of protoplanetary systems, the breeding grounds of planet formation, is a fascinating complex dynamical problem that involves many orders of magnitudes.

Go to High Performance Computing

High Performance Computing

The evolution of N-body systems, like galactic nuclei or globular clusters, is a source of different astrophysical phenomena which can be simulated using computational algorithms.

Codes and documentation that I have used and/or developed

my topics of research

Theoretical astro/physics and General Relativity
A description about my work and me

I am working at the Institute for Multidisciplinary Mathematics of the Universitat Politècnica de València, I am also affiliated at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, at the group of Nobel laureate Reinhard Genzel and at the Kavli Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics located at Peking University, in Beijing. Although my background is in theoretical physics I did my PhD on astrophysics at the University of Heidelberg. Later, from 2004, I changed my topic of research and focused in gravitational waves. For about 12 years I worked at the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, close to Berlin, where I was a group leader. These days I am moving to more theoretical subjects, in particular to differential geometry and topology in the context of gravity. Find more about me here.

  • One of my main focus since 2004

  • Still have a lot of fun with this one

  • Too broad to describe what I (try to) address in one line

  • This is work in progress but will likely move to the top of this list in a few years

Members of my team

Researchers that are currently working with me. A list of past members can be found here.

Pau Amaro Seoane

Xian Chen

Assistant Professor at the Peking University (PKU)
Xian was my postdoc from 2011-2014 at the Albert Einstein Institute (my subproject of the SFB Transregio “Gravitational Waves Astronomy”). He is now one of my closest collaborators and one of my best friends.

Alejandro Torres Orjuela

Alejandro joined our team in 2017 to do a PhD in theoretical astrophysics, with focus on general relativity and, in particular, gravitational waves of extreme-mass ratio inspirals. He was a postdoc in Zhuhai and he is now on a postdoctoral position at the university of Hong-Kong.

Verónica Vázquez Aceves

BOYA postdoc at PKU.
Verónica joined us in 2017 with a short-term fellowship and successfully applied to CAS for PhD position to work with us. She is now a postdoc at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Li Shuo

Staff researcher at NAOC in Beiijing (Chinese Academy of Sciences).
Li Shuo is working on direct-summation N-body simulations of galactic nuclei and globular clusters with massive black holes. One of his main goals is the formation of gravitational wave sources.

Angela Gardini

Postdoc researcher at IAA.
Angela is an external, active member of our Gravitational Wave Astronomy group. She has different interests and brings expertise in data analysis of numerical simulations to our group.

"Modeling and Observing DEnse STellar systems", Working Group 4