Black Holes in Their Natural Habitat

Recent major breakthroughs such as the first images of supermassive black holes and the detection of gravitational waves from stellar mass black hole binaries are transforming our understanding of the astrophysics as well as probing the theory gravity with actual observational data. Such developments have only begun and there are already extremely promising and funded efforts underway that will push the envelope even further (ngEHT, LISA, etc). Existing and future data require a thorough theoretical understanding of the relevant physics to make the most of these extraordinary and expensive facilities and to make sense of what was measured. 

 

In my group theoretical models for images of black holes, other observables as well as gravitational wave emission are being developed. In addition, these models have to be confronted with the data with the best possible data analysis / model fitting algorithms to extract the scientific conclusions in a quantitative manner.

 

Possible projects are available in GRMHD simulations of single and binary black holes, (polarized) radiative transfer / ray tracing of the former, model fitting in a VLBI context (mostly Bayesian methods), and gravitational wave source modeling with the tools of numerical relativity. Projects beyond Einstein’s theory of gravity are also possible.