Oliver Long

profile.WEBP

My name is Oliver Long and I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam, Germany.

My research focuses on the numerical modelling of unbound binary black hole encounters. These high-energy systems allow us to probe the ultra-strong gravitational potential and increase our understanding of General Relativity. To explore these systems, I employ a range of methods, including Numerical Relativity for the comparable mass case and self-force techniques from black hole perturbation theory for extreme-mass ratio scenarios.

I am a member of the SXS collaboration, the LISA Consortium, and a former member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC). Additionally, I am a contributor to the Spectral Einstein Code (SpEC), and the KerrGeodesics package of the Black Hole Perturbation Toolkit.

I completed my PhD in Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton in 2022 under the supervision of Prof. Leor Barack. My thesis, titled “Self-force for hyperbolic black hole encounters,” was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Prior to that, I earned my MPhys in Physics from The University of Manchester in 2018.

selected publications

  1. PRD
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    Black hole scattering near the transition to plunge: Self-force and resummation of post-Minkowskian theory
    Oliver Long, Christopher Whittall, and Leor Barack
    Physical Review D, Aug 2024
  2. PRD
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    Comparison of post-Minkowskian and self-force expansions: Scattering in a scalar charge toy model
    Leor Barack, Zvi Bern, Enrico Herrmann, Oliver Long, and 7 more authors
    Physical Review D, Jun 2023