Maarten van de Meent awarded ERC Synergy grant
Assistant Professor Maarten van de Meent of the Strong group is one of the four Principal Investigators of the GWSky Project which has been awarded 12 million Euros by the European Research Council to investigate gravitational waves.
Existing and future gravitational-wave detectors will observe signals so precisely that they will be able to detect possible deviations from Einstein’s theory of relativity and the standard model of particle physics. To fully exploit this unique instrumental capability, fundamental advances are needed in the theoretical description of black holes, the gravitational waves they emit, their cosmic environment, and physics beyond the standard model. The ERC Synergy grant involves four nodes, the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, the University of California Los Angeles, the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, and SISSA (Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati) in Trieste.
The aim of the project called "Making Sense of the Unexpected in the Gravitational-Wave Sky" is to use gravitational-wave measurements by existing and future observatories on Earth and in space as precision laboratories for fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. This includes the current detectors of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration as well as the future ground-based observatories Cosmic Explorer and Einstein Telescope, and the space-based LISA detector.
The GWSky node in Copenhagen will be hosted by the ‘Center of Gravity’, a new DNRF Center of Excellence at the Niels Bohr Institute, which was awarded funding last month. Together these developments consolidate gravitational physics as one of the University of Copenhagen’s internationally recognized strengths.