GRAPPA is the center of excellence for Gravitation and Astroparticle Physics at the University of Amsterdam.

It consists of ten faculty members – S. Ando, D. Baumann, G. Bertone, M.P. Decowski, B. Freivogel, S. Markoff, P. Moesta, S. Nissanke (spokesperson), J. Vink and C. Weniger – as well as leading scientists from the Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEF), the Anton Pannekoek Institute (API) and the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITFA).

GRAPPA researchers have wide research interests, including dark matter phenomenology, cosmic rays, high-energy astrophysics, cosmology, black holes physics, gravitational waves, and string theory. It also includes experimental physicists active in the Antares/KM3NeT, ATLAS, CTA, LOFAR, and XENON1T collaborations.

The aim of the new center is to bring together theoretical physicists, astronomers and particle physicists, in order to answer some of the most profound questions in Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology:

– What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?

– How can the forces of Nature be unified?

– Does this unification leave measurable signatures in the present Universe?

– What do black holes and neutron stars teach us about the fundamental laws of physics?

– How are cosmic messengers like high-energy neutrinos, cosmic rays, gamma rays and gravity waves produced? And what do they tell us about extreme environments in the Universe?