Relevant Papers

Primordial Black Holes and Gravitational Waves

Black holes form when massive stars collapse at the end of their lifetime, but it has been theorised for a long time that they could also form just after the Big Bang from the collapse of large regions of the Universe. These ‘primordial’ black holes (PBHs) could potentially be observed today as inspiralling binary systems emitting gravitational waves. The detection of gravitational waves from a pair of binary black holes by the LIGO experiment means it is possible that we have already observed the signature of PBHs, which would have spectacular consequences for our understanding of the physics of the early Universe.

I have worked on developing statistical methods to compare LIGO observations of binary black hole systems with predictions for PBH mergers, with a view to comparing primordial and astrophysical black hole formation mechanisms.