So-called extremal black holes are a special phenomenon that has been posing new questions to science for years. They rotate at the speed limit and have special dynamical properties. “To understand extremal black holes, we need new mathematical ideas,” explains Dejan Gajic, who has been researching and teaching at Leipzig University since 2022.
Gajic will use the ERC Starting Grant to set up a new research group at Leipzig University specialising in the mathematics of black holes at the interface between partial differential equations and theoretical physics. “Besides giving rise to new mathematics, our research project ExBHGravRad will shed light on the new physical phenomena that appear when black holes rotate very rapidly,” he explains.
There are also plans to invite leading international researchers to Leipzig and to increase the international visibility of the Center for Mathematical Physics, which is jointly run by Leipzig University and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (MiS).
Dejan Gajic holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Cambridge and has worked as a researcher at Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge and Radboud University in Nijmegen. He has been Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Faculty of Physics and Earth Sciences at Leipzig University since 2022. His research focuses on Einstein’s equations of general relativity.
With its ERC Starting Grants, the European Union provides early career researchers with funding for five years at the beginning of their independent careers. Gajic was selected from more than 2600 applicants, making him one of 400 scientists from all over Europe to receive one of the coveted Starting Grants this year.