Nicola MANINI
Nicola MANINI
(Università degli Studi di Milano)
birth place / date: Cles (Trento-Italy) / 6-6-1967
current position: associate professor
at: Physics Department
Universit`a degli Studi di Milano
Via Celoria 16 - 20133 Milano - ITALY
tel +39 02 50317355 - fax +39 02 50317482
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http://materia.fisica.unimi.it/manini/
OrcId: orcid.org/0000-0003-4374-6374
Past employment
2001-2011: assistant professor - Universit`a degli Studi di Milano.
2000-2001: research scientist - I.N.F.M. and SISSA - Trieste, Italy, in E. Tosatti’s group.
1995-2000: research scientist - E.S.R.F. - Grenoble - France, in M. Altarelli’s group.
1992: 6 months’ research grant - Yale Univ. - New Haven CT - USA, in F. Iachello’s group.
Education
1995, Oct. 27 - Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Theory at SISSA - Trieste - Italy cum summa laude. Supervisor: E. Tosatti. External referee: D. Baeriswyl. Thesis: Electron - Vibron Coupling in Charged Fullerene, Berry Phase, and Superconductivity, http://www.sissa. it/cm/thesis/1995/manini.ps.gz .
1991, Sep. 19 - M.Sc. in Physics at Universit`a degli Studi di Trento - Italy, with full marks and honor 110/110 cum laude. Thesis title: Vibrational Spectroscopy of Four-atomic Molecules. Supervisors: F. Iachello (Yale University), S. Oss, and M. Scotoni (Trento Uni- versity
Current research projects
Optical properties of carbon nanotubes.
Nanofriction: bridging the gap to the nano to the macro scale, colloidal models for nanofric- tion, Shapiro steps.
Ab-initio calculation of several structural, mechanical, and spectroscopical properties of
1D carbon-only chains (carbynes).
Calculation of the vibrational spectra of triatomic and 4-atomic molecules, within an algebraic model based on anharmonic Morse coordinates.
Diffusivity of confined ionic liquids.
Research Focus
An active research line covers several phenomena of lubricated nanofriction. Specifically, NM participated in the discovery and characterization of soliton-related velocity-quantization phenomena in models for the sliding of solid surfaces separated by hard lubricants. Recent research focuses on energy dissipation in quantum-mechanical mesoscopic models, energy transport in quasicrystals, and friction/dissipation in colloids. NM is currently leading a COST Action focused in nanofriction, and has contributed to an assessment of the present state of the art of this field published as a Colloquium in the Reviews of Modern Physics.
NM used classical molecular dynamics to investigate the formation of mesophases in ionic liquids then films, and the layering of such films when wetting solid surfaces.
In collaboration with L. Salasnich, NM studied the collective dynamics of ultracold in- teracting atomic Fermions, Bosons, and mixtures thereof. In particular this collaboration formulated a popular mean-field expression for the self-interaction in the crossover from the BCS to the BEC limits, studied the nonlinear dynamics of such atomic gas droplets in several experimentally relevant configurations.
Ab-initio self-energy corrections for the electron dynamics in metals: NM collaborated to develop a procedure to deal systematically with the Drude contribution to the dielectric response of metals, with applications in the calculations of optical response, electron energy loss, and GW spectra.
Vibrational spectra of polyatomic molecules. Early studies for NM’s graduation the- sis, where anharmonic algebraic models were applied to the vibrational spectra of HCNO and H2O2 (continued software maintenance and upgrade, http://alpha.science.unitn. it/~oss/vibr3at.html). This interest was revived recently with the development of a novel and promising method to compute ab-initio the full vibrational spectrum, including high overtone and combination states, in a spectral region where anharmonic effects are domi- nant.
Electron-phonon interaction in fullerene ions and ionic materials. Properties of the dy- namical Jahn-Teller ions, role of a geometric phase, related to different experimental features such as: (i) anomalous attachment of thermal electrons to fullerene; (ii) characteristic split- tings in the vibronic spectrum; (iii) reduction of the magnetic g-factor of fullerene anions; (iv) solid-state phenomena, including superconductivity; (v) phonon shakeups in photoemission from molecular C60, with full account of vibronic interaction in the final C+60 states; (vi) ab-inito calculations of structure and spectra of fullerenes; (vii) electron-electron screened Coulomb couplings in the degenerate shell of positive C60 ions; (viii) expanded fullerides. Related more conceptual work dealt with the Jahn-Teller effect and vibronic couplings in icosahedral systems, in particular the ground-state symmetry of such systems, related to the presence or absence of a geometric phase, and with many-modes dynamical Jahn-Teller.
Strong electron-electron correlation, including (i) photoemission from heavy-fermion met- als, within the Kondo lattice model, (ii) insulating and superconducting states of alkali-doped C60 materials such as NH3 K3C60, and (iii) magnetic circular dichroism in X-ray absorption spectroscopy of metallic Ni.
In collaboration with F. Pistolesi, NM developed the concept of off-diagonal geometric phases, extending the traditional Berry phase to open paths and multiple quantum states.
