Alessandra Gnecchi

Welcome to my personal webpage

I am a researcher working on supersymmetric theories of gravity and black holes.

I work at INFN, the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Italy.

Until 2022, I have been a senior postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute For Physics in Munich, Germany.

I have been a Marie Curie Fellow of the CERN Theoretical Physics Department from 2017 to 2019. Before then, I have been a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University and KUL, Leuven.

During 2020 and 2021 I have been teaching the class "Fisica dei Nuclei e delle Particelle" at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Brescia, Italy.

Here you can find my Publications .

Workshops and scientific events

Online Workshop on Quantum Gravity, Holography and Quantum Information 2021

Black holes, quantum information and Space Time reconstruction workshop

1st Workshop on High Energy Theory and Gender

External/useful links

INFN Italian Institute for Theoretical Physics, Padova division

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Padova University

GENHET Website

Research

My latest preprint

https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.03669

Islands and Light Gravitons in type IIB String TheoryWe consider the setup of an evaporating black hole in AdS$_{4}$ coupled to an external bath, embedded in type IIB string theory. We study quantum extremal islands in these backgrounds, in relation to the existence of a massive graviton. Using explicit results of the microscopic embedding of AdS$_{4}$ massive gravity in string theory, we investigate whether it is possible to achieve backgrounds with extremal islands, in which the lowest lying graviton is only slightly massive. For certain regions of the microscopic parameters, the graviton mass can be computed explicitly, and we explain how it directly affects the existence and the properties of the islands. We also show that islands can in principle exist within the regime of validity of the massive gravity effective field theory. However we see via numerical computations that the existence of quantum extremal islands at zero temperature is highly constrained, also when the dilaton is allowed to vary, so that the mass of the graviton cannot be made arbitrarily light. At finite temperature, we also identify a critical parameter, above and below which islands still exist but exhibit a different behavior. Our work supports recent proposals that the unitary evolution of black holes in higher dimensions, and more precisely their Page curve, strongly relies on the presence of a massive graviton in the effective theory.

All my publications : Inspire database

e-books

Gravità Quantistica, ebook by Treccani

www.treccanilibri.it/catalogo/gravita-quantistica/

Art and Science

doc.schools meet art panel discussion at Universität Wien

doc.schools meet artsdoc.schools meet arts

Dreaming Quantum Futures

a conversation with Suzanne Treister chaired by Libby Haney, hosted by Living in a Quantum State at Somerset House Studios, by Goethe-Institut London.

Series Curator: Lucy Rose Sollitt

https://www.goethe.de/prj/lqs/en/eve/lon.html

Arts at CERN - 10th Anniversary

Black Holes: Suzanne Treister & Alessandra Gnecchi

Collaboration with Suzanne Treister

as part of her Arts at CERN residency

Outreach

Interview for the International Society for Quantum Gravity with Davide de Biasio

Meet Science episode (in Italian)

International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2021

International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2022

Participation to the YouTube channel "La Fisica che ci piace":
BUCHI NERI! 5 cose che devi assolutamente sapere!

Lezioni per gli insegnanti in visita al CERN Italian Teachers Program @ CERN and for international ones ITP@Cern in 2018

Advisory board of videos by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell :
Why Black Holes Could Delete The Universe – The Information Paradox
and
String Theory Explained – What is The True Nature of Reality?