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The recent first detection of gravitational waves (GWs) from binary black hole mergers has spurred a renewed interest in possible deviations from General Relativity (GR), since they could be detected in the GWs emitted by such systems. Of particular interest is the ringdown phase of a binary black hole merger, which can be described by linear perturbations about a background stationary black hole solution. These perturbations mainly correspond to a superposition of 'quasi-normal modes' (QNMs), whose frequencies form a discrete set. One expects that modified gravity models could predict QNMs that differ from their GR counterpart: the detailed analysis of the GW signal represents an invaluable window to test GR and to look for specific signatures of modified gravity. The work done in this thesis takes place in the context of scalar-tensor theories of gravity, and more particularly the Degenerate Higher-Order Scalar-Tensor theories. We start by a review of these theories and their properties, and describe a way to reformulate them in a framework with a clear geometrical interpretation. We then study linear perturbations about several existing nonrotating black hole solutions of such theories, and show why the perturbation equations obtained are very hard to decouple in general. When it is possible, in the case of odd parity perturbations, we describe the propagation of waves and relate it to the stability of the underlying spacetime. When it is not, we circumvent the difficulty by making use of an algorithm proposed recently in the mathematical literature that allows us to decouple the equations both at the black hole horizon and at infinity. This allows us to get the asymptotic behaviour of waves on such spacetimes, yielding valuable information that can allow us to rule some of them out. Finally, we use the asymptotic behaviours obtained to compute QNMs numerically., PhD thesis (defended 17/06/2022, Universit\'e Paris Cit\'e), 267 pages, 17 figures, 1 appendix, short introduction in French. Based on arXiv:2012.10218, arXiv:2103.14744, arXiv:2103.14750, arXiv:2204.04107, arXiv:2205.07746

It has become clear that early career astrophysics researchers (doctoral researchers, post-docs, etc) have a very diverse appreciation of their career, with some declaring it the best job that you can have and others suffering from overwork, harrassment and stress from the precarity of their job, and associated difficulties. In order to establish how astrophysics researchers, primarily in France, experience their career, we sent out a survey to understand the impact that their job has on their well-being. 276 people responded to the survey. Whilst around half of the respondents expressed pleasure derived from their career, it is clear that many (early career) researchers are suffering due to overwork, with more than a quarter saying that they work in excess of 50 hours per week and 2\% in excess of 90 h per week. Almost 30\% professed to having suffered harrassment or discrimination in the course of their work. Further, whilst only 20\% had suffered mental health issues before starting their career in astrophysics, $\sim$45\% said that they suffered with mental health problems since starting in astrophysics. Here we provide results from the survey as well as possible avenues to explore and a list of recommendations to improve (early) careers in astrophysics., 6 page conference proceedings on well-being in French astrophysics

This article is the detailed version of a paper on dark matter, dark energy, and modified gravity, published in the December 2015-January 2016 special issue of "La Recherche" (in French), 10 pages, in French, 1 figure

To the astrophysicist faced with the puzzle of dark matter, this one appears under two different aspects: on the one hand in cosmology, i.e. at very large scales, where it seems to be made of a bath of particles; on the other hand at the scale of galaxies, where it is described by a set of specific phenomena, looking incompatible with a description in terms of particles, and suggesting that we are seeing a modification of the law of gravity. Reconciling these two distinct aspects of dark matter in a single theoretical formalism is an important challenge which could lead to some new physics in action at astronomical scales., 6 pages, to appear in l'Astronomie (in French)