Luca Visinelli

Tenure-track Assistant Professor, Università degli Studi di Salerno.

Tsung-Dao Lee Institute (TDLI), Shanghai

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor in physics at Università degli Studi di Salerno in Salerno since March 2025. Previously, I was a tenure-track Fellow at the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute (TDLI) on 2021-2025, a “Fellini” Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Italy, a Fellow at the Gravitation, AstroParticle Physics Amsterdam (GRAPPA), and a postdoc at NORDITA in Stockholm, Sweden. I graduated from The University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT (USA).

My research activity spans various interesting topics including particle astrophysics, dark matter, dark energy, and black holes. I have focused on exploring the role the axion as a dark matter candidate, for which I co-wrote a review on Physics Report in 2020. I have collaborated on an impactful paper on the Hubble tension in 2021.

I have been awarded a Research Fund For International Scientists grant by the National Science Foundation of China in 2023, with the project titled “Astrophysical Axion Laboratories”. In 2022, I have been the co-recipient of the prestigious Buchalter Cosmology Prize for “opening new, unforeseen vistas for the scientific scope of direct detection dark matter experiments”.

My h-index is 44 according to Inspire-HEP, and my Erdös number is 4.

Interests

Particle Astrophysics
Dark Matter modeling
Black Holes signatures (shadows, gravitational waves)

Education

PhD in Physics, 2011
The University of Utah
MSc in Physics, 2011
The University of Utah
BSc in Physics, 2007
University of Bologna, Italy

Research

Dark Matter

Dark matter is an hypothetical form of matter that makes up a large fraction of the mass in the Universe. The existence of dark matter is inferred through its gravitational interaction with ordinary “baryonic” matter and light, and it is essential in driving gas and dust to build up into stars and galaxies.

Dark Energy

Measurements of supernovae distances first showed that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. This finding is consistent with the idea that a large part of the energy of the Universe is stored into dark energy. Further evidences from surveys of distant galaxies and from gravitational lensing corroborates this interpretation.

Axions

The axion is a hypothetical elementary particle that is associated with the solution of the Strong-CP problem proposed by R. Peccei and H. Quinn in 1977. Axions are a also a viable dark matter candidate and the archetype of bosons that contribute to the energy density of the Universe as an ensemble of coherent waves.

Black Holes

A black hole is a region of spacetime from which no particles or even electromagnetic radiation can escape, because of the strong gravitational field. Black holes are astrophysical objects that can be formed through various scenarios, for example they are the ultimate fate of extremely massive stars. I am working on the shadow of spinning black hole and on the interplay between dark matter and black holes.