Joaquin Grefa
NP3M Fellow, Kent State University & University of Houston
vgrefaju@central.uh.edu Academic CV
I am currently a NP3M Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on nuclear theory. My research focuses on investigating the thermodynamics of strongly-interacting matter to explore the QCD phase diagram in order to study phenomena ranging from the early universe, heavy-ion collisions , neutron stars and their mergers.
Research interests:
Equation of state for strongly-interacting matter with applications to early universe, heavy-ion collisions and neutron stars.
Phase transitions in strongly interacting matter.
Effective models for strongly-interacting matter.
Gauge/gravity correspondence.
Recent Publications
Interacting mesons as degrees of freedom in a chiral model
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Scientific Collaborations
Nuclear Physics from Multi-Messenger Mergers
The Nuclear Physics from Multi-Messenger Mergers (NP3M) Focused Research Hub is a national nuclear physics effort which aims to systematically probe the properties of hot and dense strongly interacting matter with multi-messenger observations of neutron star mergers.
Modular Unified Solver of the Equation of State
MUSES is an NSF-funded large collaboration project that is developing a new cyberinfrastructure to provide the scientific community novel tools to answer critical interdisciplinary questions in nuclear physics, gravitational wave astrophysics, and heavy-ion physics.
Research Groups
Compact Stars Research Group (CSRG) at Kent State University
The research in our group focuses on the properties of white dwarfs, neutron stars, proto-neutron stars, and stellar mergers. This includes the effects of extremely large magnetic fields and the formation of exotic particles such as hyperons and deconfined quarks. Depending on how abruptly exotic matter appears inside compact stars, it can be associated with observational signals, which can give us insight into new phases of matter.
Nuclear Theory Group at the University of Houston
Our group is investigating several aspects of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) , the fundamental theory of strong interactions, under extreme conditions of temperature and density. Our main approaches include first principle lattice QCD simulations, Holography, Hadron Resonance Gas Model, 3D Ising model, Machine Learning algorithms, Bayesian analyses, Polyakov Nambu Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model, models with hadronic degrees of freedom.