Nicola Vittorio’s research activity has been concentrated on the formation and evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe.
He pioneered the field of the CMB temperature anisotropy by producing the first prediction of CMB temperature fluctuations in a Cold Dark Matter scenario.
He developed in Italy a school of cosmology that now sees several of his students as researchers, associate and full professor in the Italian university system.
He has also contributed to the X-ray spectroscopy applied to clusters of galaxies with a seminal paper, which is still widely cited in the most recent literature.
He has also contributed, as a member of the BOOMERANG collaboration, to the data analysis and theoretical interpretation of the B2K balloon-borne experiment. The paper A flat Universe from high-resolution maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation was the first to clearly show the first peak of the CMB temperature power spectrum.
Other papers of the same collaboration were aimed to described the TT (A Measurement of the Angular Power Spectrum of the CMB Temperature Anisotropy from the 2003 Flight of BOOMERANG) and the EE (A Measurement of the CMB EE Spectrum from the 2003 Flight of BOOMERANG) power spectra, the TE cross spectrum (A Measurement of the Polarization-Temperature Angular Cross-Power Spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background from the 2003 Flight of BOOMERANG), as well as the derived cosmological parameters (A Measurement of Omega_0 from the North American Test Flight of BOOMERANG), before the WMAP satellite data analysis.
As Co-I of the ESA/Planck-LFI Consortium, he has co-authored a number of papers that defines state-of-the-art results in cosmology and astrophysics. More recently, with a new generation of young cosmologists (PhD students and post-Doc) he investigated the potential of the detection of CMB B-mode polarization in reconstructing the inflation potential, as well as the use of low redshift data (SNe IA, BAO and cosmic chronometers) to assess possible tensions between the theoretical predictions of the Lambda-CDM model and the observations (H_0, sigma_8, etc.).
National and International Grants
Nicola Vittorio has been awarded with the 2018 Gruber Cosmology Prize for the results obtained by the Planck Collaboration.
Nicola Vittorio has been Principal Investigator of a series of national and international grants awarded by EU, MIUR, the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). In particular, he has coordinated the following projects:
- “Cosmic Microwave Background polarization: theoretical problems and experimental activities”, 2001, PRIN awarded by MIUR
- “High resolution maps of CMB temperature and polarization as tools for cosmological investigations”, 2004, PRIN awarded by MIUR
- “Advanced Research into galaxy clusters observed in the X-ray”, Marie Curie European Reintegration Grants, 2004
- “Statistic analysis of CMB fluctuations”, 2009, awarded by University of Rome “Tor Vergata”
- “Study activities for the scientific community of cosmology – COSMOS”, 2016, awarded by ASI
- “Participation to the phase A of the LiteBIRD mission by JAXA”, 2018, awarded by ASI
Nicola Vittorio has also been awarded, as local coordinator of national projects, of the following grants:
- “Observational constraints to dark energy from anisotropic measures of CMB”, 2002, PRIN funded by MIUR
- “PLANCK LFI”, 2002-2006, funded by ASI
- “Cosmology and fundamental physics”, 2004, funded by ASI
- “Cosmic Microwave Background Network in Europe for theory and data analysis”, FP5-NET-Research network contracts, 2000 – 2005 – “PLANCK LFI”, 2007-2009, funded by ASI
- “Cosmology and fundamental physics”, 2007, funded by ASI
- “Advanced statistical methods for the analysis of CMB radiation”, 2009, PRIN funded by MIUR
- “PLANCK LFI”, 2009-2014, funded by ASI