The Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship Initiative (CAS PIFI) program has provided me a great opportunity to work at CAS’s Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) — a leading research institute in China with a sound international reputation, which accommodates well-known theorists and experimentalists. With well-established members and visiting scientists, as well as vibrant programs, IHEP provides a stimulating working environment, from which I benefited greatly.

Throughout my stay at the Theoretical Physics Division, hosted by Professor Ren Jing, I have mostly focused on gravity and cosmology. We have studied phenomenological implications of a novel object, namely 2-2-hole (a horizonless alternative of a black hole), as a possible probe for new physics beyond General Relativity. With the recent progress in observations of astrophysical black holes, it has become more important than ever to understand in detail the physics of black hole type objects in order to correctly identify objects detected in observations. Our original work has made potentially important contributions in this aspect. We have published two papers in highly ranked peer-reviewed journals. We have also recently finished a third paper, in which we have adapted a more general perspective regarding physics in curved space-time. The preprint has been published online and is about to be submitted to a journal for review.

In addition, I have continued working with my collaborators in different parts of the world, establishing connections with various international institutes, such as Virginia Tech (USA), the University of Delhi (India), the International Institute of Information Technology (India), the East African Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-EAIFR, Rwanda), the University of Toronto (Canada), and Tel Aviv University (Israel). In addition to primary research work, I have also given a number of talks during my PIFI fellowship. For example, I was invited to “CORFU2019, Corfu Summer Institute, Workshop on Quantum Geometry, Field theory and Gravity”, in Corfu, Greece, in September 2019 to give a talk.

Moreover, during my stay at IHEP, I have had the opportunity to interact with the institute’s well-motivated and well-educated students. It was incredibly rewarding to gain such experience for my future career in academia. I believe that interacting with students is crucial from a researcher’s perspective, since it requires one to push oneself to the limit in order to present a subject in the most lucid manner, further deepening one’s own understanding of the subject. Our bi-weekly group meetings have been quite an interesting experience for me in this context.

Therefore, my stay at IHEP has been a great journey for me and I am thankful to the CAS PIFI fellowship for providing me with such an opportunity. I believe the experience I gained during the fellowship will be highly beneficial and the connections I have made will lead to more productive collaborations in future.

Source: Ufuk Aydemir,

Institute of High Energy Physics,

Chinese Academy of Sciences