About Me

Education: MS in Astrophysics and Cosmology at the University of Padova; BS in Physics at the University of Camerino

Research Interests: Formation channels of intermediate-mass black holes in massive star clusters; evolution of star clusters; impact of star cluster dynamics on binary star evolution

Publications: A list of my publications can be found here

Research

Formation channels of intermediate-mass black holes in massive star clusters
In my master thesis I explored the main formation channels of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) in massive star clusters, i.e. runaway collisions in the first evolutionary stages of the cluster and hierarchical black hole mergers after its relaxation, using the N-body code PETAR. A link to this work can be found here.

Efficiency of runaway collisions in young globular clusters
In this project (Mestichelli+, in prep) we have studied the efficiency of runaway collisions in star clusters in the first 20 Myr of their lives as a function of their central density, using the N-body code PETAR. The results of this project were presented in a poster at the "Two in a million" workshop (ESO - Garching).

Binary-black hole mergers in Population III populated star clusters
Work in progress!

Community

Outreach: I partecipated to SHARPER (European Researchers' Night) in September 2023, focusing in particular on the discussion of general relativity and gravitational waves. In April 2024, during my visiting period at the University of Heidelberg, I partecipated to the Girl's Day with my colleagues. There, we organized an hands-on session on computational astrophysics.

Contact

Email: benedetta.mestichelli@gssi.it

Address: Viale Francesco Crispi,7 - L'Aquila, Italy