Violetta Sagun

Violetta Sagun is a Senior Researcher in Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Southampton, affiliated with the Gravity Group within the STAG Research Centre and the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences. She has previously held postdoctoral positions at Coimbra University (2019–2024) and Lisbon’s CENTRA (2016–2018), establishing a strong international research profile.

Her research focuses on compact stars, multi-messenger astrophysics, and the properties of strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions. She specializes in the effects of dark matter on neutron stars, including their structure, thermal evolution, and merger dynamics. A key aspect of her work involves numerical relativity simulations of dark matter-admixed compact star binaries, contributing to the science case for next-generation detectors like the Einstein Telescope.

Her recent publications demonstrate a strong trend in modeling dark matter interactions in neutron stars, probing the equation of state, phase transitions, and gravitational wave signatures. She frequently collaborates with leading groups in Portugal, Germany, Poland, and beyond, with work published in journals such as Physical Review D, Astrophysical Journal, and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Among her scientific contributions are studies on:

• Thermal evolution of neutron stars with dark matter
• Tidal deformability as a probe of dark matter
• Constraints on fermionic and bosonic dark matter from observations
• Quasiequilibrium configurations of dark matter admixed binaries
• The nature of compact objects like HESS J1731-347

She advises no publicly listed students and has not been noted to receive specific scientific awards in the provided text. Her research is conducted within the Gravity Group at Southampton, a leading center for gravitational physics and astrophysics.