Dr. Trevor Scheopner

I study the dynamics of binary systems of spinning black holes in general relativity by analytically calculating observables perturbatively in Newton’s gravitational constant using techniques from scattering amplitudes and effective field theory. During much of the inspiral phase of binary black hole coalescence events, the separation between the black holes is very large compared the size of either one. This separation of scales allows the black holes to be treated effectively like point-like particles and for their interaction to be treated by a quantum field theory of massive fields interacting with the metric. This contact with particle physics enables the application of the ever-growing amplitudes toolkit, which has proven itself effective and efficient to higher orders in perturbation theory, to the general relativistic two-body problem. The spin of the black holes add a rich mathematical structure that is both theoretically interesting and experimentally important as it alters the gravitational wave signal emitted from the binary.

Publications
Here is a link to my publications from INSPIRE.