I’m extremely glad to have been awarded the status of IOP Trusted Reviewer! This is a certification from the Institute of Physics (IOP) which recognizes the best reviewers for IOP journals, in recognition of an exceptionally high level of peer review competency, as rated by the editors. In practice, it recognizes reviewers who consistently submit good reviews. The IOP journals I regularly review for (which are also journals where I regularly publish my papers) are JCAP and CQG. I believe in the value of peer review and put significant efforts into ensuring my reviews are always detailed and helpful for the authors, so I am glad this has been officially recognized!
Sgr A* horizon-scale tests paper published in CQG!
My paper with Rittick Roy, Yu-Dai Tsai, Luca Visinelli, Misba Afrin, Alireza Allahyari, Parth Bambhaniya, Dipanjan Dey, Sushant Ghosh, Pankaj Joshi, Kimet Jusufi, Mohsen Khodadi, Rahul Kumar Walia, Ali Övgün, and Cosimo Bambi on horizon-scale tests of gravity theories and fundamental physics from the EHT image of Sgr A*, which I previously reported on in an earlier news item, has now officially been published in CQG! The full bibliographic coordinates for the paper are Class. Quant. Grav. 40 (2023) 165007. Here is a link to the paper (which is published Open Access).
Sgr A* horizon-scale tests paper accepted in CQG!
I’m really excited that my paper on horizon-scale tests of gravity theories and fundamental physics from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) image of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) has been accepted for publication in CQG! This is a huge paper I led with 14 other authors spread throughout the world (our countries of affiliation include Italy, UK, China, USA, India, Iran, Canada, South Africa, North Macedonia, and Turkey): Rittick Roy, Yu-Dai Tsai, Luca Visinelli, Misba Afrin, Alireza Allahyari, Parth Bambhaniya, Dipanjan Dey, Sushant Ghosh, Pankaj Joshi, Kimet Jusufi, Mohsen Khodadi, Rahul Kumar Walia, Ali Övgün, and Cosimo Bambi. We used the EHT image of Sgr A* to test over 50 well-motivated theoretical scenarios, ranging from theories of gravity, novel fundamental physics frameworks, and black hole mimickers such as naked singularities and wormholes. This paper was initially (see v1) written only with Rittick, Yu-Dai, and Luca, tirelessly and also shamelessly ambulance-chased over a weekend following the exciting EHT announcement on May 12, 2022, but was then substantially polished and extended throughout summer 2022 with the addition of all the new authors - it is easily one of the most impactful papers I’ve ever written and at the same time likely the paper that drained the most energy out of me, and I’m really relieved to finally see it accepted for publication, after a very long refereeing process (one of the referee reports was a 4-page long pdf in 10pt font!). You can find the preprint version of the paper on arXiv: 2205.07787.
