Big stars burn everything they have, die fast, and produce big black holes. So when you see two black holes together, it’s likely that the big black hole comes from the big star. Or maybe not? Before dying, the big … Continue reading
May 25, 2022
Author Archives: Davide
May 4, 2022
New horizons for fundamental physics with LISA
Another short post today, but it’s not just astrophysics that will be awesome with LISA, but fundamental physics too! Here is the white paper of the relevant LISA working group. Get ready to test your wildest ideas, my theory friend! … Continue reading
April 26, 2022
PhD in gravitational physics!
The University of Milano-Bicocca welcomes applications for Ph.D. scholarships. The application deadline is May 20th, 2022 for positions starting in the Fall of 2022: https://en.unimib.it/education/postgraduates/doctoral-research-phd-programmes/applying-doctorate/calls-application In particular, the theoretical astrophysics group is looking for strong, highly motivated candidates to join … Continue reading
April 22, 2022
Long-term research appointment in computational astrophysics at Milano-Bicocca (Italy)
The University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy) invites expressions of interest for a 3+2 year research position in HPC applications to astrophysics. The astrophysics group at Milano-Bicocca provides a vibrant environment with expertise covering all aspects of gravitational-wave astronomy, relativistic astrophysics, galactic … Continue reading
April 21, 2022
Got an ISCRA-B supercomputer allocation!
I was just awarded a large allocation on the Italian national supercomputer at CINECA. My PhD student Viola De Renzis (our parameter-estimation expert!) is the co-I on our proposal. Our award is part of the so-called ISCRA Class B program … Continue reading
April 13, 2022
“With a little help from my friends” Workshop at JHU
We’re at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) today, for a brainstorming workshop we organized together with the gravity groups at JHU and Penn State. A ton of interesting people, cool science, fun numerics, big black holes, future detectors, and many new … Continue reading
April 8, 2022
The last three years: multiband gravitational-wave observations of stellar-mass binary black hole
Observing gravitational waves from the ground (i.e. LIGO, Virgo, etc) give us a unique view on “the last three minutes” of the life of compact objects before they merge with each other. Going to space (I’m talking to you, LISA!) … Continue reading
April 4, 2022
Constraining black-hole binary spin precession and nutation with sequential prior conditioning
Daria’s new paper is out! (With key contributions from others in the group… This is also Viola’s first paper!). Here we look at sub-dominant black-hole spin effects in current data from LIGO and Virgo (yeah sorry guys… our black-hole spin … Continue reading
March 11, 2022
Astrophysics with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
LISA astrophysics is awesome and everything you might ever want to know is written this paper. [Sorry for the short blog post, but there isn’t much else to say really…] A huge thanks to all the captains that put this … Continue reading
March 9, 2022
Deep learning and Bayesian inference of gravitational-wave populations: hierarchical black-hole mergers
It took a while (so many technical challenges…) but we made it! Matt‘s monster paper is finally out! Let me introduce a fully-fledged pipeline to study populations of gravitational-wave events with deep learning. If it sounds cool, well, it is … Continue reading
March 2, 2022
New class! Astrostatistics
I just had the first lectures of a class I’m teaching for the first time: Astrostatistics and Machine Learning (sounds exciting? Well, it is!). This is an advanced course for the MSc degree in Astrophysics and Space Science at the … Continue reading
February 23, 2022
Congrats Cecilia!
Huge congrats to my student Cecilia Fabbri who got her Bachelor’s degree today. Cecilia defended (quite brilliantly!) her project titled “Constraining the black-hole irreducible mass with current gravitational-wave data”. Her work ended up in our recent draft (arxiv:2202.08848). Cecilia is … Continue reading
February 21, 2022
The irreducible mass of LIGO’s black holes
Spinning black holes are weird (well, all black holes are weird but those that spin are the worse!). They have a funny thing called ergoregion where orbiting particles can have negative energy. Penrose was the first to realize that this … Continue reading
January 20, 2022
People visiting
Traveling is (kind of) coming back, and we’re having lots of visitors around, all supported by external research grants (congrats folks, you’re great!) Daria Gangardt is visiting Milan from Birmingham for 6 months from January to July, supported by a … Continue reading
January 7, 2022
Cariplo Foundation Grant
I’m very happy to share that I was awarded a 330k EUR grant from the Cariplo Foundation. Cariplo is a trust that supports scientific research in the Lombardy region of Italy. Our proposal is titled “Deep into the relativistic two-body … Continue reading
December 6, 2021
TEONGRAV
My group and I are now part of TEONGRAV, which is the Italian national initiative dedicated to gravitational theory and phenomenology. TEONGRAV is run by the INFN (National Institute for Nuclear Physics) and, besides the other folks here in Milan, … Continue reading
November 17, 2021
The Bardeen-Petterson effect in accreting supermassive black-hole binaries: disc breaking and critical obliquity
Breaking things is fun! In the previous paper of this series, we looked at accretion disks around massive black-hole binaries and found things were going awry. We kept on finding configurations that our implementation could not handle… And now we … Continue reading
October 13, 2021
Gravitational-wave population inference at past time infinity
Great Scott, a new paper! When analyzing gravitational-wave data, looking at one black hole at a time is not enough anymore, the fun part is looking at them all together. The issue Matt and I are tackling here is that … Continue reading
October 11, 2021
Nate is joining us!
Nathan Steinle is officially starting his postdoc in the group today! Nate graduated with Mike Kesden at the University of Texas at Dallas and is now working with me and the rest of the Birmingham crowd. Welcome Nate! Hope you … Continue reading
October 4, 2021
Postdoctoral fellowships in gravitational-wave astronomy at Milan-Bicocca (Italy)
The University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy) invites expressions of interest for postdoctoral positions in gravitational-wave astronomy. Successful candidates will join Prof. Davide Gerosa and will constitute the core team of the “GWmining” project funded by the European Research Council. Targeted investigations … Continue reading
September 18, 2021
Welcome Viola!
Viola De Renzis is the latest addition to our group! Viola graduated from Rome “La Sapienza” with an MSc thesis on exotic compact objects and is now starting her PhD with me at Milan-Bicocca. Viola plays guitar, arguably better than … Continue reading
September 8, 2021
SIGRAV Prize for Young Researchers
It is a true honor to receive the career Prize for Young Researchers of the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitational Physics (SIGRAV). I was awarded the prize in the class of relativistic astrophysics. It’s amazing to be recognized … Continue reading
September 1, 2021
Moving (back to) Milan!
We moved! I’ve had the opportunity to relocate to Milan, in the north of Italy, very close to where I’m from. I’m now an Associate Professor at the University of Milan-Bicocca, one of the two campuses in the beautiful city … Continue reading
August 6, 2021
Population-informed priors in gravitational-wave astronomy
No black hole is an island entire of itself. We’ve got many gravitational wave events now. One can look at each of them individually (aka “parameter estimation”), all of them together (aka “population”), or each of them individually while they’re … Continue reading
July 14, 2021
Well done Max!
Huge congrats to Maciej (Max) Dabrowny, who just graduated from the University of Birmingham after a very successful research project with us (Max’s project ended up in a paper!). Well done and all the best for the future.
July 11, 2021
Settimana dell’astronomia 2021
I was recently interviewed for the Italian Week of Astronomy (“Settimana dell’Astronomia”), a science festival organized by Fondazione Lombardia per l’Ambiente and supported by various Italian associations, universities, and research centers. Here is the nice clip they put together (I … Continue reading
June 24, 2021
Modeling the outcome of supernova explosions in binary population synthesis using the stellar compactness
Today we go deep into the perilous world of binary population synthesis! Using Nicola’s code MOBSE, our master student Maciej has implemented some new prescriptions for how supernovae explode and produce compact objects. In practice, we use the compactness (that’s … Continue reading
June 10, 2021
A new IREU friend from Missouri
We have a new friend in the group! Meredith Vogel is joining us for her undergraduate summer research project. Meredith is e-visiting us from Missouri State University (but will soon start her grad school at the University of Florida*) and … Continue reading
June 10, 2021
Bayesian parameter estimation of stellar-mass black-hole binaries with LISA
LISA is going to be great and will detect stuff from white dwarfs to those supermassive black-hole that live at the center of galaxies. If we’re lucky (yeah, who knows how many of these we will see), LISA might also … Continue reading
May 27, 2021
Looking for the parents of LIGO’s black holes
Who are the parents of LIGO’s black holes? Stars, most likely. Things like those we see in the sky at night will eventually surrender to gravity and collapse. Some of them will form black holes. Some of them will form … Continue reading
May 18, 2021
Come to Milan for a PhD!
The University of Milano-Bicocca welcomes applications for Ph.D. scholarships. The application deadline is June 16th, 2021 for positions to start later in 2021: https://en.unimib.it/education/doctoral-research-phd-programmes/how-apply-phd-programme In particular, I am looking for a strong, highly motivated candidate to join my newly established research … Continue reading
May 11, 2021
Hierarchical mergers of stellar-mass black holes and their gravitational-wave signatures
The quest of finding their astrophysical origin of merging black-hole binaries is now a key open problem in modern astrophysics. Stars are the natural progenitor of black holes: at the end of their lives, the core collapses and leaves behind … Continue reading
September 2, 2016
Wooo! Source modelling at the dawn of gravitational-wave astronomy
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!