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Scientific Report 2007-2009
Introduction
Introduction
The Department of Physics of ‘Sapienza’, Università di Roma, is the natural heir of the tradition
of Enrico Fermi, Franco Rasetti, Ettore Majorana, Edoardo Amaldi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Emilio
Segrè (School of Rome), and is renown worldwide for its high quality research, international
prestige and variety of teaching.
In this report all the activities of the Department from 2007 to 2009 are presented. During
these three years the scientists of the Department of Physics have published approximatively 1500
articles on international refereed journals. Many of these publications appeared on journals with
the highest Impact Factor (IF): 60% of them on journals with impact factor greater than 3 and 15
appeared on journals with IF>10. The high quality of the research carried out in our Department
has led to a large number of funding grants from Italian and European funding agencies.
The scientific activity is organized in more than 100 research lines, grouped in six subject areas:
Theoretical Physics, Condensed Matter Physics and Biophysics, Particle Physics, Astronomy &
Astrophysics, Geophysics, History of Physics and Physics Education. For each area there is an
introductive summary, followed by a one page report describing the main activities and lists of
the involved scientists and the most relevant papers published in the considered time span. The
detailed description of the Experimental and Computational Facilities of the Department is also
included. To provide a complete insight on the Department activity, this book reports all the
funded grants involving our institutions as well as Schools, Workshops and Conferences held in
this period. The list of published papers in international referred journals divided by subject area
and year completes the description.
In the considered triennium several highly recognized awards have been granted to members of
our community, let me just mention the most relevant: the Dirac Medal to Luciano Maiani, the
Lagrange-CRT Foundation Prize and the Microsoft European Science Award to Giorgio Parisi,
the Dan David Prize Astrophysics-History of the Universe to Paolo de Bernardis, the Boltzmann
Medal to Giovanni Gallavotti, the Enrico Fermi Prize to Miguel Angel Virasoro and to Luciano
Pietronero. Such a high rate of prizes received by scientists of the Department testifies that the
”School of Rome” is still lively.
The high quality of the research and educational activities of the Department draws the lifeblood
of the commitment and passion of all members of the department itself. It is therefore both a
pleasure and a duty to warmly thank all the administrative and technical staff, together with the
whole body of scientists, for their personal effort to make things work. An effort that is more and
more important in this very moment that sees a constant, dramatic reduction of resources, and
the disownment of the value of research and culture.
I would like to conclude this brief Introduction by dedicating this report to the memory of Nicola
Cabibbo. We had the privilege of having Nicola as a member of our Department. His works on
the weak interactions are worldwide recognized. He has also been the president of the Italian
National Institute of Nuclear Physics from 1983 to 1992, president of ENEA from 1993 to 1998
and since 1993 he has been the president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. At the time of
publication of this report he has been awarded the Dirac Medal, a prize that he cannot receive
personally due to his untimely death.
Giancarlo Ruocco
Director of the Department of Physics
Sapienza Università di Roma 5 Dipartimento di Fisica