Research in Gravitational Physics

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This award is concerned with a broad range of research in gravitational physics, including research projects in classical general relativity, cosmology, and quantum field theory in curved spacetime. The main aim of this research is to obtain a deeper understanding of the implications of Einstein's theory of general relativity for phenomena involving black holes, strongly self-gravitating stars, and the large scale behavior of our universe. The nature of quantum phenomena in strong gravitational fields will also be explored. The research will involve the direct participation of graduate students and a postdoctoral research associate in all aspects of the research, and it will thereby contribute to their training. The areas of research associated with this award are of considerable interest to the public, and activities will be undertaken, such as giving public lectures, that aid in the dissemination of scientific knowledge to the public.The specific research topics to be investigated include: The development of a variational principle to determine black hole and black brane stability and obtain exponential growth rates in the case of instability; possible extensions of this variational principle to rotating, relativistic stars; the use of canonical energy to provide bounds on gravitational perturbations of black holes; an analysis of black hole stability in asymptotically AdS spacetimes; the relationship between extrema of entropy and stationarity in general relativity; the memory effect in cosmological spacetimes; gravitational lensing effects on the CMB at very small angular scales; self-consistent equations of motion for particles that take account of second-order gravitational self-force corrections; the formulation of interacting quantum field theory in curved spacetime via an operator product expansion; and an analysis of the self-adjointness properties of nonlinear field observables in quantum field theory in curved spacetime.