Research

I carried out my research projects at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Hannover (Germany), the International Max Planck Research School on Gravitational Wave Astronomy and at the Leibniz University Hannover. Additionally, I was a member of the LIGO and GEO Scientific Collaborations.

My primary focus was on searching for gravitational waves from coalescing intermediate-mass black hole binaries. I conducted detailed analyses using LIGO-Virgo data collected between July 2009 and October 2010. Another key project involved assessing the sensitivity to coalescing intermediate-mass black-hole binaries of the advanced LIGO and Virgo observatories (which came online a few years after the completion of this study).

This work is reported in greater detail in the following publications, where I am the main author:

• Search for gravitational radiation from intermediate mass black hole binaries in data from the second LIGO-Virgo joint science run (ArXiv pre-print here)
• Prospects for intermediate mass black hole binary searches with advanced gravitationalwave detectors (ArXiv pre-print here)
• Search for intermediate-mass black hole binaries with networks of ground-based gravitational-wave detectors (Ph.D. thesis)

For a non-technical overview of the search in LIGO-Virgo data, you can read the outreach article I authored for the series of LIGO science summaries.

In addition to this work, my Ph.D. research included contributions to the following projects:

• All-sky search for gravitational-wave bursts in the second joint LIGO Virgo run (ArXiv pre-print here)
• Localization of gravitational wave sources with networks of advanced detectors (ArXiv pre-print here)
• The NINJA2 project: Detecting and characterizing gravitational waveforms modelled using numerical binary black hole simulations (ArXiv pre-print here)

I earned my Master’s Degree in Physics from the University of Padua (Italy), graduating with top honours (110/110 with distinction).

For my thesis project, I worked at the National Laboratories of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Legnaro (Italy), in the facility that hosted the AURIGA gravitational-wave antenna. My research was supported by a grant from the INFN.

My thesis focused on modelling the gravitational pull exerted by interplanetary dust on the satellites of the ESA-NASA LISA space-based gravitational-wave observatory (based on the LISA design available at that time). I explored how this pull could affect the detection of gravitational radiation. The approach followed in this study also has potential applications for dark matter searches within our solar system.

The analysis is outlined in greater detail in the following publications, where I am the leading author:

• Effects of interplanetary dust on the LISA drag-free constellation (ArXiv pre-print here)
• Effect on interplanetary dust on the LISA drag-free constellation (Master’s Thesis)

I also contributed to the following publication:

• Modulation of LISA free-fall orbits due to the Earth–Moon system (ArXiv pre-print here)

I participated in the summer student programme at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia (near Chicago, USA). At the time, Fermilab housed the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. The programme is a joint collaborative effort between Fermilab and the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN). During my time there, I worked alongside the local research team of the University of Padua (Italy), focusing on data analysis for particle physics at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experiment.