Research

As an alternative, Extended Theories of Gravity (ETGs) suggest that the present period of accelerated expansion is not driven by a cosmological constant (or more generically Dark Energy) but it is a gravitational effect associated to terms of order higher than linear on the Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian. By using different astrophysical phenomena and different datasets it should be possible to further test GR, and confirm or rule out its alternatives. Moreover, forthcoming experiments such as Euclid or eLisa could be extremely important to give a definitive answer to the following question: Is GR sufficient to explain all the gravitational phenomena from collapsed objects to the evolution of the Universe and the formation of structures? Does the theory need to be changed, or at least, modified? Since from a conceptual point of view, there are no a priori reasons to restrict the gravitational Lagrangian to a linear function of the Ricci scalar R, minimally coupled with the matter, it is more interesting to construct a suitable theory of gravity from the data. This point can be achieved by studying the variation of the fundamental constants, or some modification of gravity such as scalar-vector-tensor and f(R)-models that reproduce cosmological, extragalactic, galactic and Solar System observations, being a viable alternative to the concordance model without requiring Dark Energy or Dark Matter. Having an alternative explanation demands: (a) to test them at all scales, both in the strong and weak field limit; (b) to test other basic tenets of the LCDM cosmology such as the adiabatic expansion of the Universe that results from the thermal equilibrium and the photon number conservation which are violated in many scenarios, such as string theories.

My research has mostly been focused on the fields of research in dark matter, dark energy, cosmology and theory of gravitation. I have acquired working knowledge in various aspects of astrophysics and cosmology such as Cluster of Galaxies, Cosmic Microwave Background temperature anisotropies, Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, Gravitational Waves, and modified gravity. My work has required to: develop modeling tools for the end-to-end simulations of data analysis, for instance, simulate CMB maps with noise and foregrounds residuals; design filters to remove the CMB and thermal dust component (mainly based on IDL programming language); carry out MCMC simulation to constraint model parameters. Not all these techniques appeared in the final publications but they were very helpful to gain an understanding of the problem.

Hereby you can read about the results achieved in each fields.

• Binary Systems & Geodesic Motion

• Cosmology

• Einstein Telescope

• Galaxy Clusters

• Galactic Dynamics

• Self-Gravitating Plasma