Postdoctoral position: "Gravitational waves and compact objects" - IP2I (UMR 5822)

Research project

Since the discovery of gravitational waves (GWs) in 2015, LIGO and Virgo have observed numerous gravitational wave signals originating from the mergers of compact objects such as black holes or neutron stars. In addition to this wonderful discovery, which confirms a 100-year old prediction of general relativity, the observations of gravitational waves offer new ways to observe the Universe in absence of, or in a complementary way to, electromagnetic counterparts, together with the possibility to test general relativity. In particular the LIGO/Virgo experimental program is an ambitious way to better understand our Universe by detecting the extremely faint GW emitted by compact objects.

At IP2I, two groups have recently emerged in the context of gravitational waves: a theory group, which simulates mergers of binary black holes and neutron stars in order to find constraints on black hole and neutron star models; an experimental Virgo group, which contributes to the analysis of the LIGO/Virgo data in particular for the search and characterization of signals emitted by the coalescences and mergers of black holes and neutron stars. Both groups interact in order to interpret the experimental data, and they currently work on the possibility to clearly disentangle gravitational waves emitted by light primordial black hole mergers from the ones emitted by neutron star mergers.
The combination of experimental and theoretical expertise is a strong IP2I asset which will allow the postdoc to make an original contribution to the determination of the properties of astrophysical objects, strengthening the Lyon (and in general French) commitment to the GW community. A better determination of the parameters will have a significant impact on the results of the LIGO/Virgo publications on the data available and for those collected in the next data-taking period, scheduled for the end of 2021. For such an ambitious project, the recruited postdoctoral researcher is expected to have an expertise on gravitational waves, on numerical simulations of compact object mergers and on high performance computing.