PhD Projects: Gravitational Wave Science

From black hole collisions to testing fundamental physics

Black holes are known to have a particularly simple structure in General Relativity, with only three parameters (mass, spin, charge) controlling their dynamics. However, in the presence of new gravitational physics, e.g. related to the high-energy completion of gravitational theories or to the low-energy effects related to dark energy or dark matter, this structure can be altered. With novel observations of black hole mergers from LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA we now have exquisite data at our disposal to probe the nature of black holes, which we will use in this project to learn more about the underlying physics.

More specifically, this will involve 1) theoretical components: understanding the underlying fundamental physics and black hole solutions using so-called effective field theory techniques. A particular focus will be to better understand the interplay between the effects of new gravitational physics and the black hole spin.  2) coding components: implementing the above theoretical components in analysis codes used by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration to test the associated new physics using the latest gravitational wave observations.

Contact Dr Johannes Noller (j.noller AT ucl.ac.uk)