Carlos Bertulani - Research

Research

Prof. Bertulani's thesis work on electromagnetic processes in relativistic heavy ion collisions is often taken as the standard reference for gamma-nucleus and gamma-gamma physics in collisions with heavy nuclei. Numerous processes related to lepton-pair (e.g., e+e-, or quark-antiquark) production, and to meson production in Peripheral nuclear collisions were first discussed and proposed in his thesis. The excitation of multiple giant resonances (i.e., a giant resonance on top of another) in nuclei was also a prediction of his thesis work. The excitation of multiple dipole resonances were verified in experiments at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI), Germany. The Coulomb dissociation Method (CDM) was another product of his earlier work, as a PhD student, in 1986. This method is now used in several nuclear accelerators worldwide to extract information on radiative capture processes in stars, which often cannot be measured directly.

Since 1990, Prof. Bertulani's work is focused on the physics of nuclei far from the stability line, e.g. halo nuclei. But he has contributed to pioneering theoretical articles on the subject, as far back as 1986 on the nature of the 11Li nucleus. On the subject of rare nuclear species, he has co-authored the first theoretical review in 1993 and the first textbook in 2002. Prof. Bertulani has published textbooks on nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics and edited books of international conferences that he organized. He is often involving in popularizing science, e.g. a feature article on Physics Today, March 1994.

He was a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in 2000-2001 and of other prestigious awards worldwide.