Research
PhD Project
The impact of stellar evolution and dynamics on the formation of compact-object binaries
During my PhD I was part of Dr. Mapelli’s research group working
on N-body simulations of young and dense star clusters in order to
understand the impact of stellar evolution and dynamics on the formation and evolution
of compact-object (neutron stars and black holes) binary systems.
These objects are thought to be the best candidates to produce gravitational
waves observable in the near future with the second-generation ground-based
gravitational wave interferometers Advanced Ligo and Virgo.
More info here
Scientific interests
- dynamics of black holes and neutron stars in star clusters
- direct-summation N-body simulations in star clusters
- gravitational waves in the frequency range of Advanced VIRGO and LIGO
- stellar and binary evolution
- big data analysis and visualization
Master Thesis
My master thesis involved developing a code to calculate the cross-correlation among the centers of dark matter haloes in cosmological simulations. We wanted to do that “brute-force” in coordinate space instead of adopting the Fourier transform method commonly preferred in literature to be able to catch the small features expected at small scales. The code is, however, based on a KD-tree to reduce the time needed and run in parallel over multiple slices form the same simulation box.
Bachelor Thesis
My bachelor thesis was about the use of optical vortexes (light beams with distorted wavefronts) in astrophysics.