Education
During his Doctor of Philosophy (perfezionamento) in 1967-1969 at the Scuola Normale Superiore and in later years he worked on higher-order radiative corrections in Quantum Electrodynamics with Ettore Remiddi.
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Riccardo Barbieri
Edit Profileprofessor Theoretical physicist
Career
He has written more than two hundred research papers in the field of theoretical elementary particle physics, and has been particularly influential in physics beyond the Standard Model. Riccardo Barbieri received his undergraduate education in 1963-1967 at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and at the University of Pisa. His laurea advisor was Pietro Menotti.
In the 1970s he turned to computations in Quantum Chromodynamics, collaborating in particular with Raoul Gatto and Zoltan Kunszt.
In 1976 at European Organization of Nuclear Research, he made the prediction, later experimentally verified, of the hadronic widths of the three charmonium P-waves. In 1980-1982, Riccardo Barbieri was a staff member at the European Organization of Nuclear Research Theory Division.
The Standard Model of particle physics by then well established, he started focussing on models beyond the Standard Model, in particular supersymmetry. In 1982, he formulated the first realistic model of mediation of supersymmetry breaking via supergravity.
Since 1984 and until now, Riccardo Barbieri has been professor of theoretical physics at Pisa, first at the University of Pisa (1984-1997), and then at the Scuola Normale Superiore (1998–present).
Some of his most influential results in this period include:
In 1988, the quantitative formulation of the naturalness concept in supersymmetric models. In 1990, the formulation of a reference parametrization of the quantum corrections to the electroweak precision observables. In 1995, pointing out the significance of flavour and Communist Party violations in supersymmetric unified theories even in absence of any flavour or Communist Party violation in the input for the soft-supersymmetry breaking parameters.
In 2006, the proposal of a Dark Matter model based on a second Higgs doublet without vacuum expectation value.
Having taught in Pisa for 30 years, Riccardo Barbieri is acclaimed for creating a numerous and flourishing school of theoretical high energy physics. Among many of his students and postdocs who went on to become professors of theoretical physics in Italy and around the world, are Gian F. Giudice and Michelangelo Mangano (permanent staff members at the European Organization of Nuclear Research), Riccardo Rattazzi (professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Alessandro Strumia (professor at the University of Pisa), Andrea Romanino (professor at SISSA), Paolo Creminelli (professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics), Michele Papucci (professor at the University of Michigan), Gia Dvali (professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich), Vyacheslav Rychkov (professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Paris).
“Elementary particle physics is the quadrant of nature whose laws can be written in a few lines with absolute precision and the greatest empirical adequacy.”.
