Maria Benedetta Barbaro

Associate Professor

I work in the field of nuclear and many-body theoretical physics. My current research is mainly devoted to the study of electroweak interactions in nuclei, in particular on the construction of nuclear models for neutrino-nucleus scattering.  On one side, my research tries to achieve a deeper understanding of nuclear structure and dynamics, and on the other it provides the necessary input for studies beyond the field of nuclear physics: the investigation of the properties of neutrinos, the search for leptonic CP violation, and the study of the proton and neutron form factors. It is also strictly connected with the construction and improvement of event generators for future neutrino oscillation experiments at FermiLab (DUNE) and JPARC (Hyperk). 

My work involves several long-standing collaborations with colleagues in Spain, France, Bulgaria and USA.  The interdisciplinary aspects of this research, as well as the strict and fruitful collaboration with experimental groups, are exciting and enriching. 

Research products: Inspirehep

Valerio Belocchi

PhD student

My research activity regards the lepton-nucleus interaction at intermediate energies, representing a bridge between many-body and nuclear physics, and particle physics. The adopted nuclear description relies on Chiral Perturbation Theory,  an Effective Field Theory describing Quantum ChromoDynamics at low energy, so that the appropriate degrees of freedom are colour-singlet baryons and mesons. The main part of my work is the description of a particular kind of lepton-nucleus interaction, the two particle-two hole channel, in which a double nucleon knockout takes place.

My studies aim to a better understanding of nuclear dynamics, and provide relevant tools especially for high-precision neutrino experiments, devoted to the study of neutrino properties, such as mass and oscillation parameters. For this purpose, electromagnetic scattering on nuclei represents a fundamental step to get a further comprehension of the entire interaction process, and that is the reason why I work in parallel on electron- and neutrino-nucleus cross section.

Research products: Inspirehep 

Andrea Beraudo

Senior (INFN)

My research activity addresses various aspects of the modelling of the matter produced in high-energy hadronic collisions, from proton-proton to nucleus-nucleus: transport calculations of light and heavy-flavor particles, hydrodynamic calculations, open-quantum-system approach to the study of in-medium quarkonium production. 

Furthermore, I teach the "Advanced nuclear theory" Ph.D. course and I'm involved in several outreach activities, mainly devoted to junior high-school science teachers and to high-school students.

Research products: Inspirehep 

Marco Monteno

Paolo Parotto

Researcher (RTD-A)

I work in the field of high-energy nuclear physics, and focus on the study of QCD thermodynamics. I am particularly interested in describing the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. I am part of the Wuppertal-Budapest lattice QCD collaboration, within which I study observables that help us describe the properties of strongly interacting matter at large temperature and at finite density. My work serves as a basis for a number of theoretical approaches to the study of heavy-ion collisions, like hydrodynamic simulations. The research is carried out in close contact with experimental endeavors currently in place at the LHC (CERN), RHIC (BNL) and FAIR (GSI). With the extension to larger baryon densities, the results of this research  can also guide the study of dense objects like neutron stars, and their mergers. 

Research products: Inspirehep