My white-board filled with Feynman Diagrams. My preferred theoretical tool!
My scientific activity of is focused on the development of new theoretical tools to describe the ground and excited state properties of complex materials. I have been equally interested in the formal and mathematical understanding of the theoretical approaches, as well as in their practical applications by devising efficient methods and algorithms.
I started my PhD work in 1999 with the aim of describing quasi-particle properties in noble metals using an Ab-Initio approach. However, I readily realized that there were no adequate numerical tools available. Therefore I wrote a new numerical code in order to easily implement new theories and approximations in an Ab-Initio environment. We are in 2000 and this is the beginning of the Yambo Project. The first work published using Yambo was, indeed, the quasi-particle properties of a noble d-metal.
Now the Yambo code is part of a large project whose dimension is growing every year, involving more and more colleagues in the development and management of the code.
During my career I constantly explored new areas of research that are well represented by few key works. I used Many-Body Perturbation Theory(MBPT) to describe quasi-particles and excitons. I studied finite-temperature optical and electronic properties. In the aforementioned works, paradigmatic bulk materials, like Silicon or Copper have been considered. I has also applied MBPT to study optical properties of nano-structures like h-BN nanotubes or the Aharonov-Bohm gap oscillations in carbon nanotubes induced by strong magnetic fields. Also key phenomena induced by the confined nature of carbon nanotubes and molecular systems (the trans-azobenzene molecule) have been analyzed.
I have been equally interested in crucial theoretical developments, like the derivation of accurate ground state energy functionals or the devising of TDDFT kernel. In recent years I started working in the field of out-of-the-equilibrium phenomena.
In the field of non-equilibrium Physics I have won a one year fellowship with the Ikerbasque Science Foundation (Bilbao, Spain) to study the electronic dynamics induced by ultra-intense laser fields. This is the ELISE project. In addition I won a national funding programme (FIRB).
I am now leading a group of four different nodes and eight researches devoted to the combined experimental and theoretical investigation of ultra-fast and ultra-intense processes at the nano-scale. The total amount of fundings for this three years project is of almost 1 million euros.