Dr David Trestini’s reseach aims at provided very accurate predictions for gravitational waves generated by binary systems of compact objects, such as black holes or neutron stars. These predictions are made within the framework of general relativity, as well as within the framework of more exotic theories, such as scalar-tensor theories.
Dr Trestini is current a postdoctoral fellow in Dr Adam Pound’s group.
Understanding precisely how to map a gravitational waveform to the source that generated it an essential part of gravitational wave astronomy and is necessary to make the best possible use of the data provided by current and future gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer and LISA. Generating such maps, which are called waveform templates, is the main research focus of Dr Trestini.
Dr Trestini main expertise is computing gravitational waveform templates entirely analytically within the post-Newtonian approximation, which assumes that the two compact objects orbit each other with a small relative velocity. More recently, and in collaboration with the Southampton Gravity Group, he has been interested in the orthogonal expansion in the small mass ratio between the two objects and how can these two expansions can inform each other and be hybridized.
Dr Trestini has taught the tutorials associated to the following undergraduate courses as a teaching assistant at Sorbonne Université:
Dr Trestini graduated with a MASt in Applied Mathematics from the University of Cambridge and a Diplôme d’ingénieur from École Polytechnique (Palaiseau, France). He then earned a PhD in Physics from Sorbonne Université (Paris, France) under the supervision of Pr. Luc Blanchet and Dr. Laura Bernard. He spent one year as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Prague, Czech Republic), then joined the University of Southampton for a three year postdoctoral position.