Globular clusters are gravitationnally bound and densily packed star clusters, among the oldest structures in the universe.
For a long time they have been considered very simple, spherical objects hosting one single stellar population. Since a few decades, multiple stellar populations have been detected in most GCs, as star-to-star variations in some chemical elements. Their origin remains a mystery.
I have investigated several aspects of the multiple stellar population phenomenon in my PhD Thesis.
Credit: ESO
Published work
I have investigated accretion disks around stellar mass black holes as potential sources for the enriched material involved of the formation of the multiple stellar populations.
My results have been published in A&A:
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024A%26A…684A.181F/abstract
Ongoing work
I am currently investigating the shape of GCs and their MSPs using a combination of photometric data from the Stetson catalogue and the Hubble Space Telescope.
The two projects mentioned above are part of my PhD thesis that I successfully defended on the 10th of March 2025.
A strong interdisciplinary component is present, merging astronomy and sustainability.
My Thesis is available here.