Project description
Mapping the chaotic galactic centres using gravitational waves
Scientists recently spotted unexpectedly massive, fast-spinning black hole pairs. These giants likely formed when smaller black holes repeatedly crashed into each other inside crowded galactic centres, rather than growing alone. While an upcoming space mission, LISA, will soon probe these chaotic environments by analysing gravitational-wave distortions, current theoretical models are simple. They completely ignore how the extreme gravity and messy, oval-shaped paths near spinning galactic centres warp these space ripples. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the TripleGW project will develop a new open-source software tool to map these complex paths. This will help astronomers decode real space data, prove exactly how these black hole pairs work and create the first gravitational-wave map of the chaotic environments inside galactic centres.
Objective
This year, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration announced detections of unusually massive and rapidly spinning binary black holes (BH) are difficult to reconcile with isolated stellar evolution, pointing instead to dynamical assembly and repeated mergers in galactic nuclei (GN). LISA, launching in the coming decade, will directly probe such environments through long-baseline phase and amplitude modulations—including line-of-sight acceleration and Doppler shifts and de Sitter/Lense–Thirring precession—thereby revealing the influence of a nearby supermassive BH. Existing studies largely assume circular, Newtonian orbits and non-spinning GN, leaving the relativistic, eccentric, and inclined regime near spinning GN essentially unexplored. The TripleGW project aims at filling this gap by developing new techniques for the rich phenomenology that GN can modify the binary BH waveforms. As a Marie Curie Fellow at the NBIA, I will develop theoretical techniques for eccentric, relativistic trajectories near spinning GN and novel techniques for orbital precession effects. I will release these advances as a rigorously validated, open-source Python package for LISA Working Groups and Open Data Challenges. Using these tools, I will perform end-to-end parameter-estimation and population studies to (i) detect and characterize GN environmental effects, and (ii) measure GN properties directly from gravitational wave data. The results will establish GN as a demonstrable formation channel for binary BH and deliver the first gravitational wave map of dynamical conditions in GN, precisely timed with LVK upgrades, third-generation ground-based detectors, and LISA's launch.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark
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