Mariona Giner Mascarell

Mariona Giner Mascarell

Biography

Mariona Giner is originally from Benicarló, a small town in Spain, and is a first-generation student pursuing a double major in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Richmond.She is drawn to abstraction and the mathematical structure underlying physical laws, with particular interests in cosmology, general relativity, differential geometry, and manifolds. She spent several years working in computational cosmology under Dr. Ted Bunn, where she focused on simulations of the Cosmic Microwave Background. At the same time, she was pursuinga rigorous independent study on Riemannian geometry and tensor analysis to explore the foundations of the current gravity theory. At MIT, she is working with Dr. Chistina Eilers at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics, analyzing the mathematical properties of quasar distributions to understand the growth of supermassive black holes. Her true passion lies in mathematical physics, so she is planning on pursuing her graduate school studies in mathematics.

Abstract

The Correlation Function, Host Halo Mass and Duty Cycle of Luminous Quasars at z≤ 4 Using The Quaia Catalog

Large-scale quasar clustering traces the underlying dark-matter distribution and illuminates black-hole growth. Using the over-one-million-object Quaia quasar catalogue, we measure the projected two-point correlation function in four broad redshift bins. The analysis combines an empirically calibrated sky-completeness mask, realistic random catalogs with matched redshift distribution, and fast pair counting through Corrfunc. A power-law fit yields the real-space clustering length, which is mapped to a minimum host-halo mass within an analytic halo-model framework. Pairing these masses with observed quasar number densities provides redshift-dependent duty cycles without assuming a single-quasar-per-halo occupancy. Preliminary findings show steadily increasing clustering strength and halo mass with redshift, as well as duty cycle.