Curriculum Vitae - Dipartimento di Fisica

• General Relativistic effects around peculiar objects as naked singularities
and usual Schwarzschild and Kerr black holes
• P.I. of an XMM Newton telescope observation toward the MACHO
microlensing candidate MACHO BLG-95. This peculiar microlensing
candidate event has been characterized by a long enough duration
which allowed to use parallax methods in order to get information
about the lens distance. Hence, an estimate of the lens mass has been
obtained. In particular, MACHO BLG-95 seems to be an object with
mass 3-10 solar masses at a distance 2-6 kpc from Earth. The unusual
huge mass of the lens opens the possibility that MACHO BLG-95 is
an isolated neutron star or a stellar mass black hole. In both cases,
we expect that the object accretes the surrounding interstellar matter
(for example via Bondi accretion mechanism) and emits radiation in
the X-ray band. The expected X-ray is 10 −15 cgs, so that we have
requested, and obtained, observing time (100 ks) with the XMM Newton
telescope. Several X ray sources have been identified and are now
under study. The data analysis performed on both the EPIC PN and
EPIC MOS images allowed us to put an upper limit to the X-ray of
10 −15 cgs coming from the source so that strong constraints on the
Black Hole accretion mechanism can be put.
At present, I’m studying the physics of obscured AGNs from the observational
(XMM-RGS data) point of view and dedicate part of my
time in analyzing XMM data of serendipitous sources. In particular,
I’m interesting in Low-mass X-ray binaries, i.e. peculiar binary systems
composed of a compact object and a low-mass star. Recently, a
new class of these systems, known as symbiotic X-ray binaries (with
a neutron star with a M-type giant companion), has been discovered.
Up to now, only a few objects (three or four) of this kind are known.
We have possibly discovered one of the best candidate. Other interests
in the use of XMM data are in the study of intermediate-mass black
holes (IMBHs) and cataclysmic variables (CVs).
Cosmology
• I was involved in the VST (Very Large Telescope Survey Telescope)
project which will undergo a survey of the sky up to the magnitude 24.
For the collaboration, I developed programs (C and IDL) to simulate
deep field images useful for the pipeline analysis. The code is still
under development.
Membership
• INFN associate (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare).