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Stephen Fairhurst

Professor Stephen Fairhurst

(he/him)

Professor
Gravity Exploration Institute

Comment
Media commentator
Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

My research focuses on observing gravitational wave signals emitted by the coalescence of black holes and neutron stars, and using these observations to understand the properties of individual black holes and neutron stars and their population in the Universe.

Publication

2025

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Websites

Research

My research focuses on identifying gravitational wave signals emitted by merging black holes and neutron stars, and using the observed signals to understand the properties of the sources.

I am an active member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and am involved in analyzing the data from the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA gravitational wave observatories.  In September 2015, we made the first detection of gravitational wave from the merger of two black holes, GW150914.  Subsequently, we have detected several hundred black hole binary mergers and also the merger of two neutron stars, GW170817, which was also observed as a Gamma Ray Burst and kilonova.

 

 

Teaching

  • PX3241: Special Relativity and Particle Physics'
  • I supervise BSc, MPhys and MSc research projects, with a focus on gravitational wave observations of black holes.
  • I prevously developed and taught the first year module 'Computational Skills for Problem Solving, and the fourth year module 'Advanced general relativity and gravitational waves' in 2015.

Biography

Prof Fairhurst obtained a BA in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 1995, and completed the part III mathematics in 1996. He obtained my PhD in Physics from Penn State University in 2001, supervised by Abhay Ashtekar. His doctoral research focused on the properties of black hole horizons.

Following his PhD, he was a Killam postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta for two years and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee for three years. It was at Milwaukee that he began to work on searches for gravitational waves using the LIGO, Virgo and GEO detectors. He worked as a visiting associate at the California Institute of technology for a year.

Prof Fairhurst joined the staff at Cardiff University in 2007. He was a Royal Society University Research Fellow from 2007 to 2014. He is currently a Professor at Cardiff University.

Supervisions

  • Gravitational wave observations
  • Populations of black holes and neutron stars
  • Next-generation gravitational-wave observatories

Current supervision

Sam Higginbotham

Sam Higginbotham

Meryl Kinnear

Meryl Kinnear

PhD Researcher

Jordan Barber

Jordan Barber

PhD Researcher

Contact Details

Email FairhurstS@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone +44 29208 70166
Campuses Queen's Buildings - North Building, Room 1.16, 5 The Parade, Newport Road, Cardiff, CF24 3AA

Research themes

Specialisms

  • General relativity and gravitational waves
  • Black Holes