Roberto Emparan

Universitat de Barcelona (UB)

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

I'm originally from Bilbao. I got both my BSc (in June 1990) and my PhD (in November 1995) in Physics from the University of the Basque Country. In January 1996 I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara, for my first postdoc. Two years later, I moved to Durham University, in northern England, for a second postdoc. Near the end of 1999 I took up a lecturer position back in Bilbao, under a new (but flawed) program for recovering young researchers. I took leave from there in January 2001 to move to a Fellow position at CERN (the European Lab for Particle Physics, outside Geneva). Since January 2003 I have been ICREA Research Professor at the Department of Fundamental Physics at Universitat de Barcelona. In 2016 I was awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council.


Research interests

I try to understand the nature of spacetime at its most fundamental level. We know since Einstein that, due to the existence of gravity, spacetime is a dynamical entity. So I study the classical and quantum aspects of gravity and its most basic objects: the black holes. The natural starting point is the theory of General Relativity and the theories that naturally incorporate the ideas of holographic spacetime, namely, String and M-Theory and the AdS/CFT correspondence.

Selected publications

– Emparan R & Martinez M 2016, ‘Exact event horizon of a black hole merger’, Classical And Quantum Gravity, 33, 15, 155003.

– Emparan R, Izumi K, Luna R, Suzuki R & Tanabe K 2016, ‘Hydro-elastic complementarity in black branes at large D’, Journal Of High Energy Physics, 6, 117.

– Emparan R & Martínez M 2016, ‘Black hole fusion made easy’, International Journal of Modern Phyics D 25, 1644015


Selected research activities

Plenary talks at

ERE 2016, Lisboa; Iberian Strings 2016, Madrid

Invited talks and colloquia at

Higgs Centre, Edinburgh (colloquium); DFT, UPV-EHU Bilbao; Inst H Poincaré, Paris; DFT, U. Granada; YITP Kyoto; GR 21, New York; U. Santiago Compostela (colloquium); Facultad Física USC; Brussels+KU Leuven; Lorentz Institute, Leiden U.; IFT-UAM Madrid; Maths Dept, Nagoya;Black Holes workshop, Nagoya; Kobayashi-Maskawa Colloquium, Nagoya

Invited graduate lectures at FisyMat, U. Granada

Dissemination

Conference at FCR Programme Dia de la Ciència a les Escoles 2016. Talk at primary school for Setmana de la Ciència 2016. Article for “Investigación y Ciencia”. Article for La Vanguardia. Two journal interviews (Agencia SINC). Three radio interviews. One TV interview (TV3). Four public talks (cultural centers etc). Summer Course Els Juliols UB.

Invited visiting professor at Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute, Nagoya

Member of the Committee of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation

Management Committee Member (Spain representative) and Working Group Leader of COST Action MP1210 “The String Theory Universe”

Warrantor of ICCUB for María de Maeztu award

Member of the Editorial Board of Journal of High Energy Physics and International Journal of Modern Physics D

PhD thesis supervisor of A. Maccarrone, U. Barcelona, 8 Feb 2016, and M. Martínez, U. Barcelona, 14 Oct 2016

MSc thesis supervisor of R. Luna, U. Barcelona, 30 Jun 2016

Awarded ERC Advanced Grant “A New Strategy for Gravity and Black Holes” – GravBHs