Dr. Héctor Villarrubia Rojo
Margarita Salas FellowLocation Potsdam
Main Focus
My research focuses on the study of alternatives to the standard
cosmological model (LCDM). While I have also been involved with the
theoretical development of some of these models, my main goal has always
been to analyze their phenomenology and find their unique observational
signatures.
I have recently become interested in the propagation of
gravitational waves in non-standard cosmological backgrounds. In
particular, I would like to find new effects that could be observed in
future experiments and help us to discriminate between different models
of dark matter or dark energy.
I am also pursuing a line of research
that tries to approach the problem of the 'cosmological tensions' (e.g.
H0 or S8) in a (nearly) model-independent way. The goal is to identify
generic properties that any model must have to solve several tensions at
the same time. This would constitute a powerful guide to build
consistent alternatives to LCDM and would also allow to rule out whole
classes of models.
Publications
Here are links to my publications: from INSPIRE and from the ADS database.
Curriculum Vitae
I obtained my PhD in 2020 from the Complutense University of Madrid
(UCM), working under the supervision of Prof. Jose A. R. Cembranos and
Prof. Antonio L. Maroto. During 2020 and 2021, I worked as a
postdoctoral researcher at the ETH of Zurich, in the group of Prof.
Lavinia Heisenberg. In these places, I analyzed different cosmological
models, from the theoretical perspective as well as implementing them
into Boltzmann codes and comparing them with the latest observations. I
started working at the AEI in the department of Prof. Alessandra
Buonanno in 2022, funded by a Margarita Salas Fellowship.