Research News

Qi Liu telematically defended his thesis supervised by Professor Manuel Hernández-Pajares on April 14, 2022, entitled "GNSS-based Global Ionospheric Maps: real-time combination, time resolution and applications on space weather monitoring”. The thesis focuses on GIMs including the combination of Global Ionospheric Maps (GIMs) from different centers in real-time, evaluation of real-time GIMs, investigation of the impact of temporal resolution on GIMs, and applications of GIMs on new indices about spatial-temporal components of the VTEC gradient as well as ionospheric storm-scale.

Xavier Navarro Bosque defended his thesis co-directed by Raül Rodríguez Solà and M. Carmen Casas Castillo on March 17 at the Vilanova i la Geltrú Campus. Titled "Spatial and temporal organization of rain in the metropolitan area of Barcelona", the thesis presents a complete study on rain in the city of Barcelona that includes the updating of its intensity-duration-frequency curves and the its areal reduction factors, the kinematic monitoring of storms over the city, and the possible effects of climate change on extreme intensities.

Recently Grecia Guijarro has defended her PhD thesis under supervision of Jordi Boronat and Grigory Astrakharchik in the research group "Approaches to the first principles in condensed matter physics: quantum effects and complexity". The theoretical prediction of existence of a novel type of a quantum ultradilute liquid has been published in Physical Review Letters journal. It was found that dipolar interactions on their own are sufficient for creating an ultradilute quantum liquid in a bilayer geometry.

Professor Alberto Rebassa of the Department of Physics at the UPC leads, together with Dr. Odette Toloza of the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile, a team of 30 researchers from 18 institutions around the world to obtain and analyze the spectra of 77,000 stars. in a telescope of the southern European observatory located in Chile.

Judith Medina defended her thesis co-directed by Muriel Botey and Ramon Herrero on November 30 at the Terrassa Campus. Titled "Smart control of light in EEL lasers", the thesis presents different proposals to achieve a stable and focused emission of semiconductor lasers.

Yago Herrera defended his thesis co-directed by Glòria Sala and Jordi José on December 15 at the Diagonal-Besos Campus. Titled "Models of stellar winds from X-ray bursts", the thesis presents a study on the possible ejection of mass through a stellar wind during X-ray bursts, quantifying its composition and possible contribution to galactic abundances, and characterizing observables magnitudes that can lead to better measuring techniques of neutron stars properties.

Yuri Kubyshin from NEMEN research group along with physicists from the Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Moscow State University have published a paper devoted to an analysis of beam dynamics in electron accelerators of the racetrack microtron (RTM) type and searching for improvements of their characteristics.