Research
My current research focuses on the study of the very first stars formed in the Universe (Population III stars), their capablity of producing gamma ray burst (GRBs) and of providing heavy black hole seeds for the production of supermassive black holes.
Specifically, my PhD project aims at tackling these questions:
- How are Pop-III GRBs different with respect to the ones observed at low redshifts?
- How can we model the jet propagation within a Pop-III star? What stellar properties affect the jet propagation the most?
- What is the expected rate of production of Pop-III GRBs?
- How many of them can be detected by present and future X-ray telescopes? How would they appear in our instruments?
- Can we infer properties of the initial population and of the environment in which Pop-III stars interact from the observed GRB rate?
My past research focused on constraining properties of nuclear interactions in neutron stars from the multimessenger emission of binary neutron star mergers. If you want to know more about these topics, here you can find my master thesis work for which I was awarded the 2022 Milla Baldo Ceolin national prize by INFN.