Riccardo Rattazzi (born 1964) is an Italian theoretical physicist and a professor at the
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, Savoi ...
. His main research interests are in
physics beyond the Standard Model and in
cosmology
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...
.
Career
Riccardo Rattazzi studied physics at the
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
The Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (commonly known in Italy as "la Normale") is a public university in Pisa and Florence, Tuscany, Italy, currently attended by about 600 undergraduate and postgraduate (PhD) students.
It was founded in 1810 wi ...
and at the
University of Pisa
The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe.
History
The Origins
The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...
, where he received the Laurea cum laude in 1987. He carried out graduate research at the
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
The Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (commonly known in Italy as "la Normale") is a public university in Pisa and Florence, Tuscany, Italy, currently attended by about 600 undergraduate and postgraduate (PhD) students.
It was founded in 1810 wi ...
under the guidance of
Riccardo Barbieri
Riccardo Barbieri (born 1944) is an Italian theoretical physicist and a professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.
He has written more than two hundred research papers in the field of theoretical elementary particle physics, and has been p ...
. He held postdoctoral positions at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
(1992-1993), at the
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
(1993-1996), and at
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
(1996-1998). In 1998 he became a permanent researcher at the
Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in Pisa. From 2001 to 2006 he was a junior staff member of th
theoretical physics departmentat CERN. Since 2006 he holds a professorship of physics at the
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, Savoi ...
.
Main scientific discoveries
In 1998, together with
Gian Giudice
Gian Francesco Giudice (born January 25, 1961) is an Italian theoretical physicist working at CERN in particle physics and cosmology.
Academic career
After graduating in physics from the University of Padua in 1984, Giudice obtained in 1988 his ...
,
Markus Luty Marcus, Markus, Márkus or Mărcuș may refer to:
* Marcus (name), a masculine given name
* Marcus (praenomen), a Roman personal name
Places
* Marcus, a main belt asteroid, also known as (369088) Marcus 2008 GG44
* Mărcuş, a village in Dobârl ...
and Hitoshi Murayama, Riccardo Rattazzi discovered the
anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking, a subtle quantum mechanical mechanism which contributes to the
gaugino
In supersymmetry theories of particle physics, a gaugino is the hypothetical fermionic supersymmetric field quantum (superpartner) of a gauge field, as predicted by gauge theory combined with supersymmetry. All gauginos have spin 1/2, except for ...
masses in
supergravity
In theoretical physics, supergravity (supergravity theory; SUGRA for short) is a modern field theory that combines the principles of supersymmetry and general relativity; this is in contrast to non-gravitational supersymmetric theories such as ...
.
In 1999, together with
Gian Giudice
Gian Francesco Giudice (born January 25, 1961) is an Italian theoretical physicist working at CERN in particle physics and cosmology.
Academic career
After graduating in physics from the University of Padua in 1984, Giudice obtained in 1988 his ...
and
James Wells, Riccardo Rattazzi carried out the first detailed study of the collider signatures of the
large extra dimension
In particle physics and string theory (M-theory), the ADD model, also known as the model with large extra dimensions (LED), is a model framework that attempts to solve the hierarchy problem. (''Why is the force of gravity so weak compared to the el ...
scenarios of
TeV
TEV may refer to:
* Transient Earth Voltage: a term for voltages appearing on the metal work of switchgear due to internal partial discharges
* TeV, or teraelectronvolt or trillion electron volt, a measure of energy
* Total Enterprise Value, a ...
-scale gravity.
In 2001, together with
Alberto Zaffaroni
Alberto is the Romance version of the Latinized form (''Albertus'') of Germanic '' Albert''. It is used in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The diminutive forms are ''Albertito'' in Spain or ''Albertico'' in some parts of Latin America, Alber ...
, Riccardo Rattazzi gave the holographic description of the
Randall-Sundrum solution of the hierarchy problem, as well as interpreted the
Goldberger-Wise mechanism in terms of
dimensional transmutation
In particle physics, dimensional transmutation is a physical mechanism providing a linkage between a dimensionless parameter and a dimensionful parameter.
In classical field theory, such as gauge theory in four-dimensional spacetime, the couplin ...
.
In 2004, together with
Riccardo Barbieri
Riccardo Barbieri (born 1944) is an Italian theoretical physicist and a professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.
He has written more than two hundred research papers in the field of theoretical elementary particle physics, and has been p ...
,
Alex Pomarol
Alex is a given name. It can refer to a shortened version of Alexander, Alexandra, Alexis.
People
Multiple
*Alex Brown (disambiguation), multiple people
*Alex Gordon (disambiguation), multiple people
*Alex Harris (disambiguation), multiple peop ...
and
Alessandro Strumia
Alessandro Strumia (born 26 December 1969) is an Italian physicist at the University of Pisa. His research focuses on high energy physics, beyond the Standard Model, studying the flavour of elementary particle, charge conjugation parity (CP) s ...
, Riccardo Rattazzi laid out a conceptually clear and practically useful framework for the analysis of the combined electroweak precision data of the low- and high-energy phases of the
LEP experiments.
In 2006, together with
Allan Adams,
Nima Arkani-Hamed
Nima Arkani-Hamed ( fa, نیما ارکانی حامد; born April 5, 1972) is an American-Canadian ,
Sergei Dubovsky and
Alberto Nicolis, Riccardo Rattazzi discovered surprising inconsistencies which may be present in the effective
Lagrangian
Lagrangian may refer to:
Mathematics
* Lagrangian function, used to solve constrained minimization problems in optimization theory; see Lagrange multiplier
** Lagrangian relaxation, the method of approximating a difficult constrained problem with ...
s in
quantum field theory
In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and ...
. These inconsistencies cannot be observed in empty space and at low energies, but they become apparent as violations of
causality
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...
when many field
quanta are present, or when one attempts to extend the theory to arbitrarily high energies.
In 2007, together with
Gian Giudice
Gian Francesco Giudice (born January 25, 1961) is an Italian theoretical physicist working at CERN in particle physics and cosmology.
Academic career
After graduating in physics from the University of Padua in 1984, Giudice obtained in 1988 his ...
,
Christoph Grojean and
Alex Pomarol
Alex is a given name. It can refer to a shortened version of Alexander, Alexandra, Alexis.
People
Multiple
*Alex Brown (disambiguation), multiple people
*Alex Gordon (disambiguation), multiple people
*Alex Harris (disambiguation), multiple peop ...
, Riccardo Rattazzi constructed a low-energy effective
Lagrangian
Lagrangian may refer to:
Mathematics
* Lagrangian function, used to solve constrained minimization problems in optimization theory; see Lagrange multiplier
** Lagrangian relaxation, the method of approximating a difficult constrained problem with ...
which encapsulated general properties of composite
Higgs boson
The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field,
one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the Stand ...
models in a way practically useful for the upcoming
LHC
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundre ...
experiments.
In 2008, together with
Slava Rychkov
Vyacheslav Rychkov (called Slava Rychkov, Russian Вячеслав Рычков, transcription Vyacheslav Rychkov; born 27 May 1975 in Samara, Russia ) is a Russian-Italian-French theoretical physicist and mathematician.
Career
In 1996, Rychk ...
,
Erik Tonni and
Alessandro Vichi
Alessandro is both a given name and a surname, the Italian form of the name Alexander. Notable people with the name include:
People with the given name Alessandro
* Alessandro Allori (1535–1607), Italian portrait painter
* Alessandro Baricco ...
, Riccardo Rattazzi found the first practical implementation of the
conformal bootstrap
The conformal bootstrap is a non-perturbative mathematical method to constrain and solve conformal field theories, i.e. models of particle physics or statistical physics that exhibit similar properties at different levels of resolution.
Overview
U ...
method in four-dimensional
conformal field theories
A conformal field theory (CFT) is a quantum field theory that is invariant under conformal transformations. In two dimensions, there is an infinite-dimensional algebra of local conformal transformations, and conformal field theories can sometime ...
. While this work was motivated by
physics beyond the standard model, it also proved influential in other areas of theoretical physics such as
string theory
In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interac ...
and
statistical physics
Statistical physics is a branch of physics that evolved from a foundation of statistical mechanics, which uses methods of probability theory and statistics, and particularly the Mathematics, mathematical tools for dealing with large populations ...
.
In 2009, together with
Alberto Nicolis and
Enrico Trincherini, Riccardo Rattazzi discovered the
galileons, a new class of derivatively coupled
scalar field theories invariant under the
Galilean transformation
In physics, a Galilean transformation is used to transform between the coordinates of two reference frames which differ only by constant relative motion within the constructs of Newtonian physics. These transformations together with spatial rotatio ...
s. These theories have since proved useful in the theoretical study of the early universe
cosmology
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...
and of
dark energy
In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. The first observational evidence for its existence came from measurements of supernovas, which showed that the univer ...
.
References
External links
Riccardo Rattazzi's papers in the INSPIRE Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rattazzi, Riccardo
21st-century Italian physicists
Quantum physicists
Living people
1964 births
Theoretical physicists
People associated with CERN
Academic staff of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne