After decades of null results, the gravitational wave events GW150914 and GW170817 have ushered us in the era of gravitational wave astronomy. Observations of gravitational waves from the inspiral and merger of black-hole and neutron-star binaries, also in conjunction with EM-observations, are probing important aspects of astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics -- and this is just the...
The second generation of Gravitational wave interferometers is a network of advanced detectors distributed in three different continents. They will restart the operation in 2023, including the fourth detector in Japan, bringing new data to the gravitational wave astronomers.
In this talk, after a brief introduction, we will discuss results of astrophysical interest already obtained and...
3rd generation (3G) gravitational wave (GW) observatories will pick up in the next decade, the legacy of the current generation of GW detectors, Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo, allowing the exploration of almost the entire Universe through GW signals. Einstein Telescope (ET) is the pioneer project aiming to the realisation of a 3rd generation Gravitational Wave Observatory in Europe....
A defining characteristic of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is the presence of jetted outflows. These jets are shaped by their launching mechanism and interactions with the environment (both close and further distant) of the GRB, as revealed to us when the jets decelerate from the ultra-relativistic to the non-relativistic. Due to its close proximity and off-axis orientation, multi-messenger event...
The recent discovery of gravitational waves and high-energy cosmic neutrinos, marked the beginning of a new era of the multimessenger astronomy. These new messengers, along with electromagnetic radiation and cosmic rays, give new insights into the most extreme energetic cosmic events. The detection of gravitational waves from core-collapse supernova explosions is a challenging task, yet to be...
Standard sirens have been the central paradigm in gravitational-wave (GW) cosmology so far. From the GW signature detected from the compact binary mergers, it is possible to directly measure the luminosity distance of the source, and if additional information on the source redshift is provided, a measurement of the cosmological expansion can be performed. In this talk, I will present the most...
More than 50 years ago, Apollo and Luna missions placed five Laser Retroreflector Arrays (LRAs) of Cube Corner Retroreflectors (CCRs) on the surface of the Moon. Through a technique known as Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR), it has been possible to perform high accuracy/precision measurements of the Earth-Moon distance by firing short laser pulses from ground Laser Ranging Stations to these LRAs on...
Astronomical Surveys have brought us a major advance in our understanding of the Universe and its physical laws. All observations in the sky can be described by the standard model of cosmology with just six free parameters. However, description is not the same as understanding. Despite the phenomenal progress of astronomical surveys, only a few percentage of the sky has been surveyed. Future...
The launch of the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) on December 9 2021 has opened a new window in X-ray astronomy.
IXPE is a NASA Small Explorer Mission in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The mission opened a new window of investigation including imaging x-ray polarimetry in the "bouquet" of astrophysical observables.
The observatory features three identical...
AGILE is an Italian Space Agency (ASI) space mission devoted to gamma-ray observations in the 30 MeV - 50 GeV energy range, with simultaneous X-ray imaging in the 18-60 keV band. Launched in April 2007, the AGILE satellite is operating nominally in its 16th year in orbit, and it is substantially contributing to improve our knowledge of the high-energy gamma-ray sky.
I will present the main...
During the Universe's childhood (from age ~0.5-2 billion years), most of its, still pristine, baryonic matter permeated the Intergalactic medium (IGM), filling the space between gently forming galaxies, nurturing them and in turn receiving heating photons from newly born stars and the first quasars.
In this early phase of the Universe’s growth, a fraction of these primordial baryons...
Apparent tension in the Hubble constant (H0) between the local distance ladder and the cosmic microwave background points toward a significant problem in the LCDM cosmological model. To better understand this tension, the SH0ES team (Supernovae and H0 for the Equation of State of dark energy) has recently improved the local measurement of H0 by 1) increasing the precision of geometric anchor...
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be five to ten times more sensitive depending on energy with respect to current generation Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes and will have unprecedented accuracy in its detection of very-high-energy gamma rays in the energy range from 20 GeV to 300 TeV. CTA is designed to detect gamma rays over a larger area with dozens of telescopes located on the Canary...
Direct measurements of cosmic rays in space have been extensively performed since the sixties by experiments on board stratospheric balloons, satellites and space stations. The main goals have been the search for primordial antimatter, signals of dark matter annihilation or of exotic particles, and the study of the mechanisms of production, acceleration and propagation of cosmic rays.
In...
The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is a satellite launched in December 2015. Its primary scientific goals include the study of Galactic Cosmic-Rays (GCR) up to hundreds of TeV. Even higher energies could be reached by the High Energy cosmic Radiation Detector (HERD) that is planned to be installed onboard the Chinese Space Station (CSS) in 2027, aiming to detect CR up to a few PeV...
High-elevation particle detectors have recently opened-up a new observational window in Astronomy, significantly increasing the number of detected gamma-ray sources in the very- to ultra-high energy range. In particular, these instruments have achieved unprecedented sensitivity above 100 TeV and detected gamma ray emission from sources up to 1 PeV. The recent successes have all been obtained...
High-energy cosmic rays impinging on the atmosphere of the Earth initiate extensive air showers. The electrons and positrons in the shower interact with the Earth magnetic field, this yields to the emission of electromagnetic waves with frequencies of tens of MHz. Antenna ground arrays are used to record the radio emission and reconstruct the properties of cosmic rays, such as arrival...
Since its discovery more than hundred years ago, the origin of the cosmic-ray (CR) flux measured on Earth is still unknown. To explain the energy region up the knee, located at few PeV, supernova remnants (SNRs) are usually addressed as main CR accelerators. Despite experimental efforts devoted to the identification of PeV activity in SNRs through radiative signatures at the highest energies,...
After a brief review of the status of ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) physics. I discuss observational and theoretical constraints on the sources of UHECRs. I comment also briefly on the role of magnetic fields. Then I discuss a recent analysis of radio galaxies as the dominant extragalactic UHECR sources. In particular, I argue that scenarios where few local sources like Fornax A and...
The KATRIN experiment at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology aims at a model-independent determination of the neutrino mass from the kinematics of tritium beta decay with a sensitivity of 0.2$\;$eV/c$^2$ at 90% confidence level. For that purpose a high statistics, high precision measurement of the endpoint region of the energy spectrum of beta-electrons produced in the decay is performed....
In the last decade, few experimental results, like the detection of GW170817 and the detailed study of its electromagnetic counterpart, have endorsed the so-called multi-messenger (MM) astronomy.
The IceCube observation of the high-energy neutrino event IC170922A, allowed to identify a known gamma-source, the flaring blazar TXS 0506+056, as the source of neutrino events.
As one of the...
The detection of a diffuse flux of high-energy neutrinos by the IceCube observatory has opened a new window to the Universe, revealing the existence of extremely energetic astrophysical neutrino sources. While the isotropic distribution of the IceCube astrophysical neutrinos favors an extragalactic origin, the sources responsible for the observed flux are still almost entirely unresolved and...
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) performs a systematic neutrino follow-up program, searching for optical counterparts to high-energy neutrinos with dedicated Target-of-Opportunity (ToO) observations. Since first light in March 2018, ZTF has taken prompt observations for 24 high-quality neutrino alerts from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. From two of these campaigns, we were able to...
The abundance of galaxies in the epoch of reionization (z>6) is dependent on fundamental cosmological parameters, most importantly on the properties of dark matter, such that it can be used as a powerful cosmological probe. In this talk, I will discuss constraints obtained from the deepest HST Legacy Fields observations on warm dark matter (WDM) scenarios: thermal relic WDM, sterile neutrino...
I will introduce the fundamentals of the indirect searches for dark matter, including aspects of both multi-messenger and multi-wavelength detection. I will show both recent results and future prospects for different observatories, e.g. CTA, Fermi-LAT, SKA, MAGIC among others.
Dynamical dark energy (DDE) models have been proposed to address several observational tensions arising within the standard Lambda Cold Dark Matter scenario. Different DDE models, parameterized by different combinations of the local value of the equation-of-state parameter w0 and its time derivative wa, predict different maximal abundance of massive galaxies in the early Universe. We used the...
Dark matter (DM), a large (~85%) non-baryonic and non-relativistic component of the matter density of the Universe, likely consists of one or several so-far undetected particles hypothesized in theories beyond the Standard Model (SM). One of the most promising approaches to shed light on the nature of DM particles is to search for signatures of their annihilation or decay into SM particles...
There are many astrophysical observations and cosmological evidence for the existence of dark matter (DM), but little is known of its particle nature. The Standard Model (SM) does not predict its existence, however numerous theories beyond the Standard Model (BSM) provide viable candidates for dark matter. Common candidates in many of these theoretical models are the weakly interacting massive...
NA62 is a precision physics experiment studying charged kaons and their decay products with an unprecedented accuracy (measurement of the $K^+ \to \pi^+ \nu\bar{\nu}$ branching ratio of the order of 10^{-11}), allowing to probe indirectly new physics scales up to O(100) TeV. NA62 experiment also searches directly for weakly interacting particles of up to O(100) MeV masses in kaon decays and up...
The axion, a pseudoscalar particle originally introduced to solve the ‘’strong CP problem’’, is a well motivated dark-matter candidate with a mass lying in a broad range from peV to few meV. Axions clustered inside our galaxy may be observed by means of detectors called “haloscopes” consisting in a resonant cavity immersed in a static magnetic field that triggers the axion conversion to...
In the quest for particle dark matter and physics beyond the Standard Model, the possibility of the existence of neutral long-lived particles (LLPs) has been proposed. The MATHUSLA project has been designed as a surface experiment to detect possible LLPs produced in collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The MATHUSLA detector will cover a 10^4 m^2 surface and will have 9 layers of...
Rare kaon decays are among the most sensitive probes of both heavy and light new physics beyond the Standard Model description, thanks the high precision of the Standard Model predictions, the availability of very large datasets, and the relatively simple decay topologies. The NA62 experiment at CERN has reported the first observation of the ultra-rare K+ --> pi+nunu decay, and is collecting...
Italian Space Agency supports astrophysics and fundamental physics programs since decades. There are currently many long standing programs in orbit which keep publishing outstanding results therefore justifying the space agencie’s on orbit support. There are also future space-based missions in these fields which will study for the first time other science topics such as dark energy, GW search...
