Stochastic gravitational wave background from cosmologically coupled black holes paper published in Scientific Reports!

My paper with Marco Calzà, Francesco Gianesello, and Max Rinaldi, where we study the stochastic gravitational wave background signal resulting from inspiraling cosmologically coupled BHs (see this earlier news item), has now officially been published in Scientific Reports (making this my third proper Nature publication)! The full bibliographic coordinates for the paper are Sci. Rep. 14 (2024) 31296. Here is the link to the paper (which is published Open Access).

FLAG Christmas meeting

Today and tomorrow Trento is hosting the usual Christmas meeting of the INFN FLAG iniziativa specifica, and on the occasion I will be giving a talk on “Five brief lessons on the Hubble tension” (whose slides you can find here). The meeting is typically held in Bologna just before Christmas, but this year it takes place in Trento under exceptional circumstances. Looking forward to seeing many familiar faces again (including our high-profile guest speaker and former Trento student Marco Peloso!), and to a nice dinner at Trattoria Piedicastello!

Non-parametric expansion history reconstruction paper published in PRD!

My paper with Jun-Qian Jiang, Davide Pedrotti, and Simony Santos da Costa, where we perform a non-parametric reconstruction of the late-time expansion history in light of DESI BAO data (see this earlier news item), has now officially been published in PRD! The full bibliographic coordinates for the paper are Phys. Rev. D 110 (2024) 123519. Here is the link to the paper.

Hubble tension, Ωm, and ωc paper accepted in PRD!

My paper with Davide Pedrotti, Jun-Qian Jiang, Luis Escamilla, and Simony Santos da Costa, where we discuss the multidimensionality of the Hubble tension and the roles of Ωm and ωc (see this earlier news item), has been accepted in PRD! There were extremely minor revisions compared to the earlier version, which have resulted in a clearer discussion of the novel aspects and the domain of applicability of our results. You can read the preprint version of the paper on arXiv: 2408.04530.

Stochastic gravitational wave background from cosmologically coupled black holes paper accepted in Scientific Reports!

My paper with Marco Calzà, Francesco Gianesello, and Max Rinaldi (proudly 100% made within the Theoretical Gravitation and Cosmology Group led by myself and Max!) , where we study the stochastic gravitational wave background signal resulting from inspiraling cosmologically coupled BHs (see this earlier news item), has been accepted for publication in Scientific Reports, part of the Nature Portfolio collection of journals (therefore making this my third proper Nature publication)! With respect to the earlier version we have slightly changed the title and explained the content of Fig. 2 much more clearly, but the main message of the paper is otherwise unchanged. You can read the preprint version of the paper on arXiv: 2409.01801.

Primordial regular black holes papers accepted in PRD!

Extremely good news today as my two earlier papers on primordial regular BHs with Marco Calzà and Davide Pedrotti (see these two earlier news items: part 1 and part 2), where we characterize non-singular primordial BHs as DM candidates, have both been accepted for publication in PRD! There have been a few changes with respect to the earlier versions (slight changes to the titles, discussions on the time evolution of these BHs added, and a few minor additions), but our main messages are unaltered. You can read the preprint versions of the papers on arXiv: 2409.02804 and 2409.02807.

Advanced Science news coverage for EHT and mimetic gravity paper

Non-parametric expansion history reconstruction paper accepted in PRD!

My paper with Jun-Qian Jiang, Davide Pedrotti, and Simony Santos da Costa (first one entirely produced within my group), where we perform a non-parametric reconstruction of the late-time expansion history in light of DESI BAO data (see this earlier news item), has been accepted for publication in PRD! Compared to the earlier version, there have been minor changes to the plots and title, but our main results are unaltered. You can read the preprint version of the paper on arXiv: 2408.02365.

EHT and mimetic gravity paper published in Scientific Reports!

My paper with Mohsen Khodadi and Javad Firouzjaee, where we show that the EHT observations of M87* and Sgr A* rule out the baseline version of mimetic gravity (see this earlier news item), has now officially been published in Scientific Reports (making this my second proper Nature publication)! The full bibliographic coordinates for the paper are Sci. Rep. 14 (2024) 26932. Here is the link to the paper (which is published Open Access).

EHT and mimetic gravity paper accepted in Scientific Reports!

My paper with Mohsen Khodadi and Javad Firouzjaee, where we show that the EHT observations of M87* and Sgr A* rule out the baseline version of mimetic gravity (see this earlier news item), has been accepted for publication in Scientific Reports, part of the Nature Portfolio collection of journals (therefore making this my second proper Nature publication)! The most significant addition compared to the earlier version is a new figure with examples of null geodesics in the space-times we studied, which shows in a very clear way why their shadow properties are pathological. You can read the preprint version of the paper on arXiv: 2408.03241.

Visit by Davide Racco and Flaminia Giacomini

For the next days we have the pleasure of hosting Davide Racco and Flaminia Giacomini, who are visiting us from Zurich (respectively from the University of Zurich+ETH, and ETH). Both are very well-known researchers with interests at the intersection of particle physics and cosmology (Davide) and at the interface between quantum theory/quantum information and gravity (Flaminia). They will be giving seminars by the titles of “Insights on fundamental physics from Gravitational Wave backgrounds” and “Quantum effects in gravity from a delocalised quantum source” . Welcome Davide and Flaminia!

Quasinormal modes-shadow correspondence paper published in PRD!

My paper with Davide Pedrotti, which explores the validity of the eikonal quasinormal modes-shadow radii correspondence for rotating regular black holes (see this earlier news item), has now officially been published in PRD! The full bibliographic coordinates for the paper are Phys. Rev. D 110 (2024) 084075. Here is the link to the paper.

UniTrentoMag piece on fifth forces and Bennu paper

I was interviewed by Alessandra Saletti, head of the University of Trento’s Press Office and External Relations, on our paper on fifth forces and Bennu in Communications Physics. The piece appeared in UniTrentoMag, the University of Trento’s online magazine, and is available both in Italian and English, at the links below:
mag.unitn.it/ricerca/121147/polvere-di-asteroidi-sulle-tracce-della-quinta-forza
mag.unitn.it/ricerca/121147/polvere-di-asteroidi-sulle-tracce-della-quinta-forza#English-version
Enjoy the read!

Alessandro La Sala joins my group!

Today Alessandro La Sala officially joins my group, thus becoming the first BSc student to write his BSc thesis/final project under my supervision. Alessandro is enrolled in the Mathematics BSc, but has a keen interest in physics, and his project will be on the topic of General Relativity and Dark Energy. Welcome Alessandro!

Press release for fifth forces and Bennu paper

APS Reviewer Excellence Award!

I’m absolutely honored to have received the 2024 Reviewer Excellence Award from the American Physical Society, in recognition of my exceptional peer review contributions to PRD. I strongly believe in the value of peer review and always put significant efforts into ensuring my reviews are detailed and helpful for the authors, while upholding the high standards of the journals I review for: I am therefore very glad my efforts have been officially recognized! For me this award is especially valuable coming from PRD, which is both the journal I review the most for, and the journal where I have published the most papers (including my first one).

Varying electron mass and ΛsCDM paper published in PDU!

My paper with Yo Toda, William Giarè, Emre Özülker, and Eleonora Di Valentino, where we attempt to solve the Hubble tension combining a spatially uniform time-varying electron mass in a non-spatially flat Universe, and the ΛsCDM model, featuring a late-time sign-switching cosmological constant (see this earlier news item), has now officially been published in PDU! The full bibliographic coordinates for the paper are Phys. Dark Univ. 46 (2024) 101676. Here is the link to the paper (which is published Open Access).

Quasinormal modes-shadow correspondence paper accepted in PRD!

My paper with Davide Pedrotti, which explores the validity of the eikonal quasinormal modes-shadow radii correspondence for rotating regular black holes (see this earlier news item), has been accepted for publication in PRD! Very minor revisions compared to the previous version include the addition of an extra point for which we tested the correspondence and minor updates to the figures. Unfortunately, during the review process the paper also changed its title (losing its cool first part on the lightning-thunder correspondence!), but we knew far too well that it would have been super hard to keep it. Congratulations Davide for your first paper accepted for publication, and here’s to hoping there will be many more! You can read the preprint version of the paper on arXiv: 2404.07589.