In a nutshell
Welcome! I am a 4th-year PhD student in the Astrophysics and Cosmology group at the Gran Sasso Science Institute, working with Prof. Manuel Arca Sedda and Prof. Gor Oganesyan. My research investigates the formation and dynamical assembly of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) in star clusters and their characterization through gravitational waves.
Why do we study IMBHs?
IMBHs have been a long-standing puzzle in astrophysics since the first hints of their existence emerged from dense star clusters and ultraluminous X-ray sources. To date, confirmed detections remain scarce and often inconclusive, both because their signatures are intrinsically hard to observe and because they can be confused with other compact-object interpretations. Yet these elusive objects may be the missing evolutionary link between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes, namely the seeds from which the largest black holes grew across cosmic time. Gravitational waves offer a new probe of their cosmic assembly, letting us find them and measure their masses and spins. Because IMBHs in merging binaries radiate across a wide frequency range (roughly mHz to Hz), they are compelling targets for multiband studies with current and future detectors.
Tools I work with
I study these systems with complementary simulation approaches, each capturing a different piece of the problem. Semi-analytic population-synthesis codes like B-POP trade some dynamical detail for speed, making it possible to evolve large populations of star clusters and their black holes and build the statistical samples that gravitational-wave forecasts require. Direct N-body codes like N-body6++GPU take the opposite tack: they resolve the individual stellar interactions and collisions that drive IMBH growth, at higher computational cost. Combining the two lets me connect the detailed physics of a single cluster to the population-level predictions we can test against observations.
🔠Questions that drive my research
- How do massive black holes and intermediate-mass black holes assemble across cosmic time, and what role do star clusters play?
- How can we probe this assembly with gravitational waves, from present-day observations with the LVK network to future detectors like the Einstein Telescope and LISA?
- How do star clusters shape the formation of peculiar compact-binary mergers, and how can multimessenger observations help us study them?
- What can gravitational waves reveal about the formation channels of compact-binary mergers?
Feel free to explore my publications, talks, and CV, or get in touch.
💡 I expect to defend my thesis in January 2027 and am actively seeking postdoc positions. If you know of openings or would like to collaborate, reach out!