Meet the author of 'Relic Gravitons'

by Massimo Giovannini (INFN, Milano-Bicocca (IT) and CERN)

Thursday 17 Oct 2024, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/Zurich

52/1-052 (CERN)

The event is aimed at the CERN community and CERN Alumni and Retirees, therefore physical attendance will require having a valid CERN access card. 

CERN Alumni should use this form to request CERN access cards.

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The author of 'Relic Gravitons' will give a talk about his new book at the CERN Library:

The book:

Relic Gravitons delves into the cosmic backgrounds of stochastic gravitational waves, exploring their potential as a unique source of information on the early physical conditions of the Universe close to the Planck epoch. Drawing on various lecture notes, articles, and reviews since the early 1990s, the monograph presents a topical account of the subject. The aim is to offer students and practitioners a useful tool for understanding the most recent developments of a lively field that is now thriving also thanks to forthcoming observational data.

While the detection of diffuse backgrounds of gravitational radiation might improve current bounds on the supplementary polarizations of gravitational waves, the author explores
across the sixteen chapters of the monograph the sensitivity of cosmic gravitons to the new physics beyond the standard lore of fundamental interactions. It is argued that the discovery of
relic gravitons may trigger a paradigm shift whose implications are yet to be fully understood.

In different respects, the physics of relic gravitons bridges the microworld of the standard model of fundamental interactions with the macroworld of gravity and cosmology. The ultimate purpose of this book is then to provide, at once, a systematic and self-contained presentation which is still sorely lacking in the current literature. During Massimo’s  presentation he will try to introduce what he regards as the most inspiring aspects of the book, as well as its general motivations.

The event will be followed by a Q&A and signing sessions. The book is available from the CERN Library & Bookshop. 

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About the speaker: 

Massimo Giovannini is an Italian physicist who has researched, taught and written on high-energy physics, gravitation and cosmology.  Throughout his career, he published over 220 papers and served in the advisory panels of different scientific journals. After several topical reviews and various series of lecture notes, in 2008 he published his first book, “A Primer on the Physics of the Cosmic Microwave Background'' with the aim of introducing modern cosmology from the perspective of the Cosmic Microwave Background.  Throughout his career he devoted much energy to the analysis of the relic gravitons and in 2002 he received the prize of Italian Society of Gravitation (SIGRAV) for his contributions on the theory of the stochastic backgrounds of gravitational radiation. In his spare time, he often writes reviews for the CERN Courier and he also enjoys hanging around the CERN library (see also https://giovan.web.cern.ch).