Carlo Heissenberg graduated with flying colors in 2019 from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, the Italian twin sister of the Ecole Normale de Paris. His initial research focused on the infrared properties of gravitational theories and higher spin theories from the perspective of asymptotic symmetries, a topic that later found phenomenological applications in the context of gravitational wave studies.

It was during his first postdoctoral period at Nordita-Uppsala (2019-2023) that Carlo started working on gravitational wave physics using ideas borrowed from particle physics, such as scattering amplitudes and eikonal exponentiation in particular. He quickly became a leader in the field, publishing several important papers with world-famous physicists such as Gabriele Veneziano. Carlo's group achieved, for instance, the first complete calculation of the gravitational deflection angle to the third post-Minkowskian order in the Newton coupling constant expansion, while simultaneously resolving the high-energy limit problem that was puzzling the community.

In the meantime, Carlo was granted a Marie-Curie fellowship and moved to his second postdoc at Queen Mary, while continuing to work on gravitational wave physics, focusing on new observables (waveforms, angular momentum loss, effect of spins…) that could be calculated efficiently using scattering amplitudes techniques.

Carlo accepted an offer from the IPhT and will join the lab as a permanent member in Fall 2024.

Former director of the Service de Physique Théorique de Saclay (1979-1987) [1], our friend and colleague Roger Balian has just published with his collaborators Armen Allahverdyan, Yerevan Physics Institute, and Theo M. Nieuwenhuizen, Institute for Theoretical Physics Amsterdam, on the journal Comptes Rendus. Physique de l'Académie des Sciences [2].

In this publication, the authors present a graduate course on ideal measurements, which are dynamic processes coupling the quantum system under test and a measuring device, analyzed within the framework of quantum statistical mechanics.

[1] Short biography in « Roger Balian is 80! »

[2] Comptes Rendus. Physique 2024, Vol. 25, p. 251-287. https://doi.org/10.5802/crphys.180

Olivier did his PhD in Sherbrooke and Montreal, Canada, on the N-body quantum problem, and acquired expertise in DFT (Density Functional Theory), DMFT (Dynamical Mean Field Theory) and the physics of superconducting gap symmetry in Strontium Ruthenate compounds. Since 2022, he has been a post-doc at CCQ, during which he has been able to broaden his numerical expertise without forgetting interactions with experimentalists.

With his openness to a wide range of numerical expertise and his sensitivity to the importance of experimental studies in quantum materials research, Olivier will be a tremendous asset to numerical and phenomenological physics on the Saclay plateau, and will be essential in federating and maintaining collaboration between DRF and CCQ. Welcome to the IPhT Olivier, for a brilliant career ahead!