UNIVERSITY OF CAGLIARI
Physics Department
Complesso universitario di Monserrato
SP Sestu-Monserrato km 0.7
I-09042 Monserrato (CA), Italy

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ASTROPHYSICS
Cagliari Astronomical Observatory
Località Poggio dei Pini
Strada 54
I-09012 Capoterra(CA), Italy

Nichi D'Amico - Research highlights

Probing Gravity theories. The recent discovery of the highly relativistic binary pulsar, PSR 0737-3039, which turned out to be also the first ever known Double Pulsar, provides an unprecedented laboratory of Gravity physics.
The Parkes multibeam surveys. Several pulsar search experiments carried at Parkes, in Australia, using the 21cm multibeam receiver and a rather complex data acquisition system, have nearly doubled the pulsar sample.

The Parkes Southern Pulsar Survey. A survey of the entire southern sky for millisecond and other low-luminosity pulsars using the Parkes radio telescope, and a 70cm receiver, resulted in the discovery of the first significant sample of millisecond pulsars.

Hubble Space Telescope observations of binary pulsars in Globular Clusters. The combination of Hubble Space Telescope images with radio observations carried out at Parkes, in Australia, has unveiled exciting properties of exotic binary systems and the hosting cluster. Millisecond pulsar searches in Globular Clusters. Several searches of the Globular Cluster system for millisecond pulsars, carried out at Parkes, in Australia at various epochs, resulted in the discovery of a huge population of pulsars hosted by Globular Clusters Probing the equation of state of ultradense matter with the Northern Cross. The detection of a neutron star with a spin period close or below 1 ms, would severely constrain the absolute ground state for the baryon matter in nature. An experiment with high sensitivity in the submillisecond period range was carried in the 90s using the Italian Northern Cross radiotelescope.
Searches of young and energetic radio pulsars. Pulsar searches of the potential indicators of the presence of a missing pulsar, such as Supernova Remnants, localised gamma ray sources, and steep spectrum radio sources, carried out at Parkes have led to the discovery a significant sample of young energetic radio pulsars. Gamma-ray observations of radio pulsars. Because the angular resolution of gamma-ray telescopes is intrinsically poor, a suitable method to separate the contribution of point sources from the Galactic gamma-ray background is timing. In this context, pulsars play a major role, as their timing pattern can be perfectly determined at radio wavelengths and used to fold the gamma-ray data