Research

My research primarily focuses on the structure and evolution of stellar clusters, with special attention to their black hole population. I am mainly interested in developing theoretical and numerical models for young and open clusters to interpret their present-day state and reconstruct their formation history. With my models, I aim to explore a series of open questions:

Early evolution of star cluster
Our understanding of the star clusters is still hampered by large uncertainties, mainly connected with a poor modeling of their formation and early evolution. Star forming complexes display highly non trivial structures, characterized by sub-clustering, mergers, and rotation. It is still unclear whether the observed sub-clusters will disperse once the molecular gas is ejected, or if they will merge into larger, possibly bound clusters.

Formation of black holes
Star clusters are the place where a large fraction of massive stars form, evolve, and eventually die, giving birth to populations of stellar-mass black holes. These black holes encode fundamental information on their progenitor stars, which can otherwise only be observed during their short lifetime. Finding a way to “see” these black holes in the place where they were born would offer us the an invaluable opportunity to study their formation processes.

Gravitatational-wave sources
Over the last seven years, our knowledge of compact objects has drastically improved thanks to the detection gravitational waves, mainly from binary black hole mergers. These signals are now giving us the opportunity to study their sources with unprecedented precision, and, at the same time, have opened up new fundamental questions about their formation