Roberto Emparan García de Salazar

Roberto Emparan García de Salazar

Universitat de Barcelona

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 junior lecturer position back in Bilbao. 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 am ICREA Research Professor at the Department of Quantum Physics and Astrophysics, Institute of Cosmos Sciences, at Universitat de Barcelona. In 2016 I was awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. In 2022 I was awarded the Medalla Monturiol and elected Fellow of the ISGRG.

Research interests

I strive to uncover the fundamental physical nature of space and time. Einstein taught us that gravity renders spacetime a dynamic entity. So I study gravity’s classical and quantum aspects and its most intriguing and fascinating objects: the black holes. The natural starting point is the theory of General Relativity and the theories that naturally incorporate the ideas of quantum holographic spacetime, namely, String and M-Theory and the AdS/CFT correspondence.

Selected publications

– Climent A, Emparan R, Magán JM, Sasieta M & López AV 2024, ‘Universal construction of black hole microstates‘, Physical Review D, 109 – 8 -086024.
– Climent A Emparan R Hennigar RA, 2024 ‘Chemical potential and charge in quantum black holes‘, Journal of High Energy Physics 8 – 150
Emparan R & Magán JM 2024, ‘Tearing down spacetime with quantum disentanglement‘, Journal of High Energy Physics, 3 -178.

Selected research activities

Invited seminar talks at Imperial College, London; Polygonal Gravity, IFT Madrid; Iparcos Meeting, Madrid; Instituto Balseiro, Bariloche; Crete Center for Theoretical Physics; Copernicus Webinar; Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; DAMTP Cambridge University
Summer Institute Lectures at Petnica Science Center
Research stays (> 1 week) at YITP Kyoto; KITP UC Santa Barbara
Guarantor of ICCUB for María de Maeztu Award
Managing Team Member of Gravitational Wave Probes of Fundamental Physics APPEC, ECFA and NuPECC
Evaluation Panel Member for FWO (Belgium)
Academic Promotion Adviser for NBI (Denmark); KCL (UK); U Edinburgh (UK)
Project Reviewer for ERC CoG; FWO (Belgium); MICINN; NSERC (Canada); European SF; Serbia Science Fund
Nominating Committe Member for International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation (ISGRG)
PhD Supervisor of Q. Llorens
PhD Examiner of M. Zatti (UAM)
MSc thesis supervisor of F. Mascaró