Viviana Fafone

Full Professor
Contacts

My primary scientific interest is the study of cosmic sources of gravitational waves and the development of instruments to observe them. During my career, I have been working on improving the performance of cryogenic resonant detectors and interferometric detectors and studying their future developments. I have also been involved in more theoretical studies of gravitation (alternative theories to general relativity). More recently, I have dedicated part of my work to the direct measurement of the polarization state of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), due to primordial gravitational waves emitted during the inflation.

I have conducted my scientific research at the following research institutes:

  • INFN National Laboratories in Frascati (Frascati, Italy);
  • CERN (Geneva, Switzerland);
  • California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, USA);
  • European Gravitational Observatory (Pisa, Italy);
  • Leiden University (Leiden, Netherlands);
  • Adelaide University (Adelaide, Australia).

I have been co-I or PI of numerous national and international research projects.

I've authored/co-authored over 320 papers (H-index 95 on Scopus) and 3 books on topics related to gravitational physics and gravitational waves.

In addition to my teaching and research activities, I am actively engaged in scientific outreach. I have participated in radio and television programs, collaborated with Le Scienze magazine, the Treccani Encyclopedia and the INFN scientific popularization magazine “Asimmetrie”, and delivered numerous public lectures for prestigious organizations and events, including the Genoa Science Festival, the European Researchers' Night, the Rome Science Festival, Galassica - Astronomy Festival, St. Petersburg Science Festival and TEDx in Rome and Matera. I have also taken part in several theatre events on topics related to fundamental physics and astrophysics research.

I have held various institutional roles in universities and research organizations.

Brief Overview of My Research Activity

My research can be broadly divided into four main areas:

Gravitational Wave Detection: I have worked on the cryogenic resonant detectors EXPLORER (CERN), NAUTILUS (INFN Frascati National Laboratories), and MiniGrail (Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory, Netherlands), and on the interferometric detectors Virgo (European Gravitational Observatory, Cascina) and Einstein Telescope (ET). Virgo's current sensitivity is about 60 Mpc (the average distance at which the coalescence of a binary neutron star system can be observed), enabling the detection of several extragalactic gravitational signals and initiating multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves. I have been involved in several R&D activities in superconducting electronics, adaptive optical systems, quantum optics, thermal noise, and data filtering algorithms. I have been responsible for Virgo's adaptive optics system for over ten years, and since 2021, I'he been coordinating the studies for the Virgo upgrades to ensure its global competitiveness into the 2030s and 2040s, up to the operational phase of ET. Within ET, I am overseeing the development of the adaptive optics system, which aims to achieve a circulating power in the interferometer cavities of 3 MW (30 times greater than Virgo's power in the current O4 observation run).

Cosmology: I have contributed to the Large Scale Polarization Explorer (LSPE). The experiment combines observations from a stratospheric balloon (SWIPE instrument) and ground-based observations (STRIP instrument, Teide Observatory, Canary Islands) to measure the polarization state of the cosmic microwave background. The polarization anisotropy is caused by scalar and tensor perturbations in the primordial universe’s metric, thus by density fluctuations and gravitational waves produced during the inflationary process.

Astroparticle Physics: I have studied the interaction of cosmic rays with resonant gravitational wave detectors. This activity involved cosmic ray signals detected by NAUTILUS (EXPLORER) in coincidence with a streamer tube system (plastic scintillators) and continued with the RAP experiment (Acoustic Particle Detection, at LNF), to verify the thermoacoustic model of charged particle interaction with mechanical oscillators at room temperature and at low temperatures in the superconducting regime.

Multi-messenger Astrophysics: I have been involved in the investigation of methods to optimize the joint observation of gravitational waves and low-energy neutrinos emitted by supernova collapses, and more recently, the joint observation of gravitational waves and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).

Here is a summary of my publications. For the full list, see for example ADS

Selected papers

  • LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration and KAGRA Collaboration (A.G. Abac et al.), “Observation of Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 2.5–4.5 M ⊙ Compact Object and a Neutron Star", ApJL 970, 2, L34 (2024), DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ad5beb
  • LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration and KAGRA Collaboration (R. Abbott et al.), “Search for Gravitational-lensing Signatures in the Full Third Observing Run of the LIGO–Virgo Network", ApJ 970, 2, 191 (2024), DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad3e83
  • L. Aiello, P.P. Palma, M. Lorenzini, E. Cesarini, M. Cifaldi, C. Di Fronzo, D. Lumaca, Y. Minenkov, I. Nardecchia, A. Rocchi, C. Taranto, V. Fafone, "Thermal defocus-free Hartmann Wavefront Sensors for monitoring aberrations in Advanced Virgo", CQG 41, 12, 125001 (2024), DOI: 10.1088/1361-6382/ad4508
  • A.W. Goodwin-Jones, R. Cabrita, M. Korobko, M. Van Beuzekom, D.D. Brown, V. Fafone, J. Van Heijningen, A.  Rocchi, M.G. Schiworski, M. Tacca, "Transverse mode control in quantum enhanced interferometers: a review and recommendations for a new generation", Optica 11, 2 (2024), DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.511924
  • LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration and KAGRA Collaboration (R. Abbott et al.), “Constraints on the Cosmic Expansion History from GWTC–3", ApJ 949, 2, 76 (2023), DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac74bb
  • I. Nardecchia, Y. Minenkov, M. Lorenzini, L. Aiello, E. Cesarini, D. Lumaca, V. Malvezzi, F. Paoletti, A. Rocchi, V. Fafone, "Optimized radius of curvature tuning for the virgo core optics", CQG 40, 5, 055004 (2023), DOI: 10.1088/1361-6382/acb632
  • LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration and KAGRA Collaboration (R. Abbott et al.), “Population of Merging Compact Binaries Inferred Using Gravitational Waves through GWTC-3", Phys. Rev. X 13, 1, 011048 (2023), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.13.011048
  • LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration and KAGRA Collaboration (R. Abbott et al.), “GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the Second Part of the Third Observing Run”, Phys. Rev. X 13, 041039 (2023), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.13.041039
  • KAGRA Collaboration, LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration (B. P. Abbott et al.) “Prospects for observing and localizing gravitational-wave transients with Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA”, Living Rev. Relativ. 23 (2020), DOI: 10.1007/s41114-020-00026-9
  • Virgo Collaboration (F. Acernese et al.) “Increasing the Astrophysical Reach of the Advanced Virgo Detector via the Application of Squeezed Vacuum States of Light”, Rev. Lett. 123, 231108 (2019), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123. 231108
  • LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration (B. P. Abbott et al.) “GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral”, Rev. Lett. 119, 161101 (2017), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.161101
  • LIGO Sci Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration, 1M2H Collaboration, Dark Energy Camera GW-EM, DES Collaboration, DLT40 Collaboration, Las Cumbres Observ Collaboration, VINROUGE Collaboration, MASTER Collaboration (B.P. Abbott et al.) “A gravitational-wave standard siren measurement of the Hubble constant”, Nature 551 (2017), DOI: 10.1038/nature24471
  • LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration (B. P. Abbott et al.) “Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger”, Rev. Lett. 116, 061102 (2016), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102
  • Virgo Collaboration (F. Acernese et al.) “Advanced Virgo: a second-generation interferometric gravitational wave detector”, Quantum Grav. 32, 024001 (2015), DOI:10.1088/0264-9381/32/2/024001
  • Punturo et al. “The Einstein Telescope: A third-generation gravitational wave observatory”, Class. Quantum Grav. 27:194002 (2010), DOI:10.1088/0264-9381/27/19/194002
  • Astone, M. Bassan, P. Bonifazi, P. Carelli, E. Coccia, C. Cosmelli, V. Fafone, S. Frasca, A. Marini, G. Mazzitelli, Y. Minenkov, I. Modena, G. Modestino, A. Moleti, G.V. Pallottino, M.A. Papa, G. Pizzella, P. Rapagnani, F. Ricci, F. Ronga, R. Terenzi, M. Visco, L. Votano “The gravitational wave detector NAUTILUS operating at 0.1 K”, Astropart. Phys. 7, 231-243 (1997), DOI: 10.1016/S0927-6505(97)00023-6
  • Astone, M. Bassan, P. Bonifazi, P. Carelli, M.G. Castellano, G. Cavallari, E. Coccia, C. Cosmelli, V. Fafone, S. Frasca, E. Majorana, I. Modena, G.V. Pallottino, G. Pizzella, P. Rapagnani, F. Ricci, M. Visco “Long-term operation of the Rome "Explorer" cryogenic gravitational wave detector”, Phys. Rev. D 47, 362-375 (1993), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.47.362
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Teaching in the Physics Department
ID Course Name Semester Length CFU
Gravitational Waves First 14 Weeks 6
Mechanics and Thermodynamics Second 14 Weeks 14