Beppe Nardulli has made important contributions, from high-energy physics to the statistical mechanics of neural networks and to the development of algorithms for image recognition. His research activity has been conducted within the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN). He has been coordinator of the theoretical division of INFN-Bari for six years.
In high-energy physics, Nardulli has investigated deep-inelastic scattering processes, meson spectroscopy, hyperon decays, proposing ways of determining fundamental parameters of the Standard Model, as e.g. quark masses. His collaborations with Raoul Gatto in Geneva, Roberto Casalbuoni in Florence and Ferruccio Feruglio in Padua, produced many relevant results concerning hadronic systems with heavy quarks.
He has contributed to the development of Chiral Heavy Quark Effective Theory, characterized by effective lagrangians based on the simultaneous use of heavy quark symmetries and chiral symmetry. This model is able to describe a large number of processes involving hadrons containing a beauty quark, which are relevant for experiments at LHC and B-factories.
QCD sum rules have been applied to the analysis of heavy hadron or light quark properties. Rare B decays, methods for the determination of the angles α and γ of the unitarity triangle, quark spectroscopy, quarkonium systems studied by potential models, physics with polarized hadron beams have also been investigated.
He also studied the QCD phase diagram at high quark densities, and was one of the leading experts on the inhomogeneous superconductive phases. When baryon density reaches some critical values, nuclear matter undergoes transitions to phases with peculiar features. Nardulli has determined under which conditions of quark density and mass nuclear matter can form cristalline structures with peculiar spatial symmetries. These conditions are realized e.g. in astrophysical systems, as the core of a neutron star. The use of effective lagrangians for the study of QCD in the color superconductive state, inhomogeneous color superconductivity, the properties of the crystalline color superconductivity phase, astrophysical implications of the high density - low temperature phase, gapless color superconductivity are the main topcis covered in this field.
Another important field which Nardulli has contributed to is statistical mechanics of neural networks and its applications. The ability of classifying through self-learning networks can be used in many fields, for instance for jet reconstruction in proton collisions, or for the identification of the Higgs particle, themes currently of great interest for the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider @ CERN.
Moreover, neural networks are used for biomedical image reconstructions, or for landmine detection. The promotion of these activities has been put forward by Beppe Nardulli through the foundation of a dedicated Exellence Center for Biomedical Applications of the University of Bari, the TIRES, and through the INFN project for the devolpment of methods for landmine detection in war scenarios. He also edited the book Modelling biomedical signals, together with Sebastiano Stramaglia, professor at University of Bari, published by World Scientific Pub Co Inc (2002), showing that several methods and approaches rooted in physics are successfully applied to analyze and to model biomedical data. The book contains papers on physiological rhythms and synchronization phenomena, gene expression patterns, the immune system, decision support systems in medical science, protein folding and protein crystallography.
The domains of attraction and the chaotic properties of neural networks, application to signal processing and treatment of high energy data, also in connection with the use of clusterization algorithms, the treatment of biomedical data have been studied.
«Being obliged to stay in my room for several days and also occupied in making observations on my two newly made clocks, I have noticed a remarkable effect which no one could have ever thought of. It is that these two clocks hanging next to one another separated by one or two feet keep an agreement so exact that the pendulums invariably oscillate together without variation. After admiring this for a while, I finally figured out that it occurs through a kind of sympathy: mixing up the swings of the pendulums, I have found that within a half hour always return to consonance and remain so constantly afterwards as long as I let them go. I then separated them, hanging one at the end of the room and the other fifteen feet away, and noticed that in a day there was five seconds difference between them. Consequently, their earlier agreement must in my opinion have been caused by an imperceptible agitation of the air produced by the motion of the pendulums.» - Christiaan Huygens
To get an idea of the research activity in this field, you can look at these slides.
Beppe Nardulli has proposed and helped to organize international scientific conferences in Martina Franca, Conversano and Bari, strongy supporting and promoting local research activity.
«Un aspetto della bellezza delle teorie fisiche è data dalle loro metamorfosi... In fisica il carattere di metamorfosi appare nella pluralità delle possibili descrizioni... Come in una metamorfosi passiamo da una descrizione all'altra per soddisfare criteri di consistenza tra teoria ed esperimenti.»He loved art and music, and he believed physics is based on beauty, as explained in a talk (in Italian) he gave at the University of Bari.
