Research Activities
The scientific activity, mainly in the field of Elementary Particle Physics, is carried out at the Gran Sasso International Laboratory (L'Aquila, Italy), DESY (Hamburg, Germany) and CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) where I am involved in the ATLAS experiment at the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is documented in more than 1100 publications in international journals (Scopus h-index = 118, Google Scolar h-index = 208), invited talks and contributions to international conferences.
- Physics at LHC with the ATLAS experiment;
- Nuclear fusion in deuterated metals;
- Antiproton and Antineutron physics;
- Heavy quark physics;
- Phenomenology;
- Experimental Techniques.
Physics at LHC with the ATLAS experiment
In 2002, together with a group of 20 physicists from the Department of Physics and Astronomy of Bologna University and INFN Bologna Section, I joined the ATLAS Collaboration to study and realize the luminometer of the experiment (Cerenkov tubes).
The experiment, designed to explore the frontier of very high energies by means of proton-proton collisions, among the results obtained in 2013 discovered the Higgs boson.
Heavy quark physics
Systematic study of heavy quark production dynamics by proton beams of very high energy (900 GeV). The main results are:
Cross section production of bottom quarks (Top Cite);
Limits on cross section production of five-quark states (TopCite).
Antiproton and Antineutron physics
A significant part of the scientific activity concerns the systematic study of light meson spectrum by annihilation reactions at rest. Among the most relevant results achieved the first direct measurement of the decay widths into pairs of pions and kaons of exotic state f0(1500) (essential to measure the gluonio content, average and best values of the Particle Data Group).
Muon Physics
Muon catalyzed fusion (MCF): cross sections production of pions and muons by high energy proton beams for Mcf purposes. Energy cost of muons in deuterium-tritium targets.
Nuclear fusion in deuterated metals
Search for 'cold fusion' effects.
Phenomenology
Constant is the interest in various areas of particle and fundamental physics:
'Neutrino Puzzle' (NP) and the Standard Model of the Sun (MSS): in the context of studies on semileptonic weak interaction constants, it has been established for the first time the ga(0) dependence of neutrino flux emitted by the sun;
Effects of G-parity violation in strong interactions;
Unitary formalisms in meson spectroscopy;
Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Mascawa matrix: review on the state of knowledge of CKM matrix elements (Top Cite);
Quantum interference of electrons: through nanoscale slits and a fast recording system (pixel matrix, 106 frames/second) placed inside an electron microscope, we have registered single electron events on single 'photographic plate ' off-line reconstructing the interference pattern and studying event time correlations.
Experimental Techniques
Neutron detection: design and implementation of an innovative detector based on lithium glasses immersed in NE213 scintillator for spectrometry in the energy range between 0.5 and 5 MeV.
Gamma ray detection: design, construction and installation of the Obelix electromagnetic calorimeter for gamma detection in the energy range between 50 MeV and 1 GeV. It was also designed and built the readout electronics, the trigger and data acquisition system.
Trigger systems and electronic read-out: design and realization of read-out and pretrigger system of Hera-b electromagnetic calorimeter.
Cerenkov tube: design, construction and commissioning of the ATLAS luminometer.
Development of new pixel sensor for experiments in high energy physics: research and development of new arrays of pixels (with low budget material) and fast read-out architectures.
