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Mark Hannam

Professor Mark Hannam

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Available for postgraduate supervision

Teams and roles for Mark Hannam

Overview

I study black holes and gravitational waves. Black holes are the most extreme objects in the universe (that we know of!), and gravitational waves are the opposite: they are so weak that they can only be detected with the most sensitive instruments that humans have ever built; when they were measured for the first time in 2015, it was one hundred years after Einstein first prediced them. Those signals were produced by black holes colliding with each other. My research has focussed on understanding and modelling the gravitational-wave signals from just such events, and the models we devevlop are used to measure the properties of those events -- how massive were the black holes, how fast were they spinning, and where were they in the universe? These measurements are filling in details in our understanding of how black holes form, and, in turn, about the past, present and future of our universe.

Publication

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Articles

Conferences

  • Puerrer, M. , Hannam, M. and Ohme, F. 2017. Can we measure individual black-hole spins from gravitational-wave observations?. Presented at: 14th Marcel Grossman Meeting On Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity 12 -18 July 2015. Published in: Bianchi, M. , Jantzen, R. T. and Ruffini, R. eds. 14th Marcel Grossman Meeting On Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Astrophysics and Relativistic Field Theories: Proceedings of the MG14 Meeting on General Relativity. World Scientific Publishing. , pp.3144-3148. (10.1142/9789813226609_0399)
  • Puerrer, M. et al. 2017. Accelerating parameter estimation of gravitational waves from black hole binaries with reduced order quadratures. Presented at: 14th Marcel Grossman Meeting On Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity 12 -18 July 2015. Published in: Bianchi, M. , Jantzen, R. T. and Ruffini, R. eds. 14th Marcel Grossman Meeting On Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Astrophysics and Relativistic Field Theories: Proceedings of the MG14 Meeting on General Relativity. World Scientific Publishing. , pp.2015-2018. (10.1142/9789813226609_0218)
  • Sathyaprakash, B. S. et al. 2011. Scientific potential of Einstein Telescope. Presented at: Rencontres de Moriond, Gravitational Waves and Experimental Gravity La Thuile, Italy 3-10 March 2012. Published in: Auge, E. , Dumarchez, J. and Tran Thanh Van, J. eds. Proceedings of the 47th Rencontres de Moriond, Gravitational Waves and Experimental Gravity, La Thuile, Italy, 3-10 March 2012. Vietnam: The Gioi Publishers
  • Sperhake, U. et al., 2008. Head-on collisions of different initial data. Presented at: 11th Marcel Grossmann Meeting on General Relativity Berlin, Germany 23-29 July 2006. Published in: Kleinert, H. and Jantzen, R. T. eds. The 11th Marcel Grossmann Meeting: On Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Gravitation and Relativistic Field Theories, Proceedings of the MG11 Meeting, Part 1, Berline, Germany, 23-29 July 2006. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. , pp.1612-1614. (10.1142/9789812834300_0210)

Research

Research interests

Numerical Relativity and Gravitational-Wave Astronomy

Numerical Relativity involves solving Einstein's equations of generalrelativity on a computer, and one of the most exciting currentapplications is to model two black holes that orbit each other, inspiraltogether, and merge to form a single black hole. The reason this is so topical is that these simulations are the only way to predict thegravitational-wave signal from black-hole mergers, which provided the first direct gravitational-wave observations by LIGO in 2015 -- and indeed, many more detections since then. Our gravitational-wave signal models were used to decipher the properties of those first direct gravitational-wave detections. As the detectors become more sensitive, and we are able to extract more detailed information from gravitational-wave signals, we need to move beyond the simple approximate models that we have developed so far, and construct precision models that capture all of the physics of black-hole-binary systems.

Teaching

I teach the 4th-year course, "Introductinon to General Relativity", and the MSc course "Numerical relativity and waveform modelling".

Biography

I studied at Waikato and Canterbury Universities in New Zealand, and atthe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the USA. During my PhDI numerically solved the equations necessary to provide the initialconditions for simulations of collisions of black holes.

After I completed my PhD in 2003, I embarked on a research world tour,stopping at the University of Texas at Brownsville; theFriedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany; University College Cork,Ireland; and the University of Vienna, Austria. In 2010 I came to Cardiffas an STFC Advanced Fellow, and became a professor in 2015. In 2015 I was also awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant to study precessing binary black holes.

Supervisions

  • Numerical relativity
  • Gravitational waves
  • Black holes
  • Waveform modelling
  • Astrophysical implications of gravitational-wave observations

Current supervision

Meryl Kinnear

Meryl Kinnear

Rhiannon Silva

Rhiannon Silva

Contact Details

Email [email protected]
Telephone +44 29208 70167
Campuses Queen's Buildings - North Building, Room N/1.17, 5 The Parade, Newport Road, Cardiff, CF24 3AA
A decade of discovery: Academics celebrate 10 years since the first detection of gravitational waves amid announcement of exciting new breakthrough

A decade of discovery: Academics celebrate 10 years since the first detection of gravitational waves amid announcement of exciting new breakthrough

10 September 2025

Gravitational waves from most massive black hole collision poses “challenge” to astrophysics

Gravitational waves from most massive black hole collision poses “challenge” to astrophysics

14 July 2025

Next-gen gravitational wave detectors will provide

Next-gen gravitational wave detectors will provide

08 December 2023