Gravity and astrophysics at UMiss

Our article Tensor-multi-scalar theories: relativistic stars and 3 + 1 decomposition (Class. Quantum Grav. 32 204001, 2015) is featured in CQG+, the companion website to the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity.

Emanuele Berti was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society upon the recommendation of the Topical Group on Gravitation (GGR).
The citation reads as follows:

“For important contributions to theoretical gravitational-wave physics, including quasi-normal modes of black holes, tests of alternative theories, the links between analytic and numerical relativity, and the astrophysics of merging black holes.”

Using the effective potential methods that we presented in a previous Letter (see this longer Physical Review D paper for details), we recently discovered that certain black hole binary configurations where the spins are aligned with the orbital angular momentum are unstable, and they can start precessing during their evolution. This can have observational implications in the electromagnetic and gravitational radiation emitted by these systems. Our paper on the precessional instability appeared in Physical Review Letters today, and it was selected as an Editors’ Suggestion.