Giancarlo Mattia

 My name is Giancarlo Mattia. I am a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in the UFOS group.

My general scientific interest is to study the formation and evolution of astrophysical disks and jets by solving the MagnetoHydroDynamics (MHD) equations through numerical simulations in order to provide a better comparison with the observations. Due to the need for efficient and stable numerical schemes, my goal is also to develop more robust numerical algorithms in order to perform more accurate and stable simulations.

I am currently investigating the impact of non-ideal processes within protostellar and protoplanetary disks on their formation, evolution, and production of winds and collimated outflows.

I have been a postdoc at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in the TEONGRAV group (local coordinator Luca Del Zanna), where I have investigated relativistic magnetic reconnection and dissipation processes in relativistic jets, focusing on short gamma-ray-burst jets.

I completed my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg (Germany) and at the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Cosmic Physics at the University of Heidelberg (IMPRS-HD) under the supervision of Christian Fendt. By performing non-ideal MHD simulations, I investigated a more consistent dynamo and diffusivity model in the context of jets launched by thin accretion disks.

During my master's thesis, I implemented a module for resistive relativistic plasmas in the PLUTO code. With this module, I studied processes related to particle acceleration in magnetic reconnection sites and the efficiency of relativistic magnetic reconnection as a source of non-thermal particles. I received my master's degree from the University of Turin, and my master's thesis advisor was Prof. Andrea Mignone.