Maximiliano Isi

Flatiron Institute

162 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

I am a gravitational-wave astrophysicist using observations to probe the physics and astrophysics of gravity, black holes, and neutron stars. I create new ways to exploit LIGO and Virgo measurements to answer questions in (astro)physics and cosmology, while paving the way for future instruments like LISA. When not working with data, I think about open questions regarding the nature of black hole mergers and their observational implications.

Before joining the Flatiron Institute as a Research Fellow, I was a NASA Einstein Fellow at MIT. I obtained my PhD in Physics from Caltech in 2018, where I was part of the LIGO Laboratory. I have been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since I joined as an undergraduate student in 2012.

My current research interests include: measurements of black-hole spins, black-hole spectroscopy, mass-function cosmology, dark matter signatures with gravitational waves, using gravitational waves to constrain the fundamental symmetries of spacetime (e.g., parity and Lorentz invariance).

h-index 94 / 27 | publications 206 / 58 | citations 87k / 2.9k

first number includes LIGO collaboration papers; second number excludes them

Photo credit: La Diaria, Juan Manuel Ramos

selected publications

Hints of spin-magnitude correlations and a rapidly spinning subpopulation of binary black holes

Asad Hussain*, Maximiliano Isi, and Aaron Zimmerman

Nov 2024

arXiv Bib

@article{Hussain:2024qzl,
  author = {Hussain*, Asad and Isi, Maximiliano and Zimmerman, Aaron},
  title = {{Hints of spin-magnitude correlations and a rapidly spinning subpopulation of binary black holes}},
  eprint = {2411.02252},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {astro-ph.HE},
  reportnumber = {LIGO-P2400522, UTWI-33-2024},
  month = nov,
  year = {2024}
}

PRL

Testing the Black-Hole Area Law with GW150914

Maximiliano Isi, Will M. Farr, Matthew Giesler, and 2 more authors

Phys. Rev. Lett., Nov 2021

arXiv Bib HTML

@article{Isi:2020tac,
  author = {Isi, Maximiliano and Farr, Will M. and Giesler, Matthew and Scheel, Mark A. and Teukolsky, Saul A.},
  title = {{Testing the Black-Hole Area Law with GW150914}},
  eprint = {2012.04486},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {gr-qc},
  reportnumber = {LIGO-P2000507},
  doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.011103},
  journal = {Phys. Rev. Lett.},
  volume = {127},
  number = {1},
  pages = {011103},
  year = {2021}
}

PRL

Testing the no-hair theorem with GW150914

Maximiliano Isi, Matthew Giesler, Will M. Farr, and 2 more authors

Phys. Rev. Lett., Nov 2019

arXiv Bib HTML

@article{Isi:2019aib,
  dimensions = {true},
  web = {https://physics.aps.org/articles/v12/s105},
  author = {Isi, Maximiliano and Giesler, Matthew and Farr, Will M. and Scheel, Mark A. and Teukolsky, Saul A.},
  title = {{Testing the no-hair theorem with GW150914}},
  eprint = {1905.00869},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {gr-qc},
  reportnumber = {LIGO-P1900135},
  doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.111102},
  journal = {Phys. Rev. Lett.},
  volume = {123},
  number = {11},
  pages = {111102},
  year = {2019}
}