Claudio Pellegrini (born in Rome on May 9, 1935) is an Italian/American physicist known for his pioneering work on X-ray free electron lasers and collective effects in relativistic particle beams."Claudio Pellegrini , UCLA Physics & Astronomy"
Retrieved: Dec 29, 2015. He was educated at the Sapienza University of Rome where he received the Laurea in Fisica ''summa cum laude'' in 1958 and the Libera Docenza, in 1965. From 1958 to 1978, he worked at the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati for high energy and nuclear physics. In the early 1960s, he was at the

Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics The Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, or NORDITA, or Nordita ( da, Nordisk Institut for Teoretisk Fysik), is an international organisation for research in theoretical physics. It was established as Nordisk Institut for Teoretisk Atomfy ...

(NORDITA) in Copenhagen, working on an alternative formulation of the theory of general relativity using tetrad fields to obtain, among other things, a better description of the energy-momentum complex. (See ''

Teleparallelism Teleparallelism (also called teleparallel gravity), was an attempt by Albert Einstein to base a unified theory of electromagnetism and gravity on the mathematical structure of distant parallelism, also referred to as absolute or teleparallelism. In ...

'' for a summary of the theoretical context of this work.) In 1978, he moved to the United States and began work at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he was an Associate Chairman of the National Synchrotron Light Source and co-director at the Center for Accelerator Physics. In 1989, he accepted an appointment at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) as a professor of physics, and later became a Distinguished Professor. At the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, he worked on the development of electron-positron colliders. He studied the physics of particle beams in accelerators, specifically instabilities and collective effects in high intensity particle beams resulting from the interaction of the particles with a self-generated electromagnetic field. In 1968 he discovered a novel collective effect, the Head-Tail-Instability, which limits the

luminosity Luminosity is an absolute measure of radiated electromagnetic power (light), the radiant power emitted by a light-emitting object over time. In astronomy, luminosity is the total amount of electromagnetic energy emitted per unit of time by a st ...

of a collider. The theory suggested a way to control the instability that has been applied to all colliders and storage rings, increasing the collider luminosity and extending their reach to explore elementary particle physics. At Brookhaven, he studied free electron lasers (FELs) and their application to the generation of high intensity coherent X-ray pulses. In 1992, based on these studies, he proposed building an X-ray FEL at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory based on self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) in order to create

femtosecond A femtosecond is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 10 or of a second; that is, one quadrillionth, or one millionth of one billionth, of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second as a second is to about 31. ...

long, one angstrom, coherent, X-ray pulses. From 1998-2001, Pellegrini and his collaborators demonstrated experimentally the validity of the SASE theory. This work and the 1992 proposal led to the construction of th
Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS)
the first 1-angstrom X-ray laser, which has been successfully operating at SLAC since 2009. LCLS has opened a new window for the exploration of atomic and molecular science at the one angstrom-one femtosecond length and time scale characteristic of these phenomena. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1987. In 1999, he received the International Free-Electron Laser (FEL) Prize for his work on X-ray free-electron lasers. In 2001, he received th
Robert R. Wilson Prize
of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

. In 2014, he was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award by U.S. President Barack Obama with the citation “For pioneering research advancing understanding of relativistic electron beams and free-electron lasers, and for transformative discoveries profoundly impacting the successful development of the first hard x-ray free-electron laser, heralding a new era for science.”"Congressional Record Extensions of Remarks Articles"
U.S. Congressional Record "In Recognition of Dr. Pellegrini's Receipt of Enrico Fermi Award": Oct 26, 2015. Retrieved Dec 29, 2015 In 2017 he has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

References

External links

Claudio Pellegrini's homepage at UCLA

Google Scholar Citations for Claudio Pellegrini

"Claudio Pellegrini: A Patriarch of the LCLS"

Video: "Claudio Pellegrini and the World’s First Hard X-ray Free-electron Laser"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pellegrini, Claudio 1935 births Living people Brookhaven National Laboratory Sapienza University of Rome alumni Enrico Fermi Award recipients Accelerator physicists Particle physicists University of California, Los Angeles faculty 20th-century Italian physicists 21st-century American physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences