Testing General Relativity in the strong gravity regime

The recent direct detection of gravitational waves by LIGO marks the beginning of a new era in gravity. Confronting the predictions of general relativity and of alternative theories with gravitational wave observations is a new frontier. The first in this direction is to understand the structure and the dynamics of black holes and compact stars in alternative theories of gravity, as these are the primary source of gravitational waves. This is the main goal on this project. More specific objective include the study of quiescent black holes and compact stars, modelling of gravitational collapse and black hole formation, and the study of the dynamical evolution of binary systems.