Faculty

paolo zuccon
Assistant Professor

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Paolo Zuccon

Name: Paolo Zuccon

Title(s): Assistant Professor of Physics

Email: pzuccon@mit.edu

Phone: (617) 253-8564

Address:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Bldg. 44-123C
Cambridge, MA 02139
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Area of Physics:

Experimental Nuclear and Particle Physics

Education:

  • M.Sc. 1998, UNIVERSITA DI PADOVA
  • Ph.D. 2003, UNIVERSITY OF PERUGIA

Research Interests

Professor Zuccon main activity concerns the study of particle physics through the measurement of the cosmic rays fluxes.
He has been involved in the construction and the qualification of AMS-02 experiment installed on the International Space Station and currently is working on the data analysis.

AMS-02 goals include:

  • the indirect  search of dark matter,
  • the search for primordial anti-matter
  • the study of the origin and propagation of the cosmic rays.

Professor Zuccon is also interested on the direct dark matter detection and on neutrino Physics.

Biographical Sketch

Paolo Zuccon is born in Italy where he conducted most of his research work before joining the MIT as Assistant Professor in January 2012. He received his Laurea in Fisica (Master Degree in Physcs) in 1998 at the Padova University defending a thesis  about the analysis of data a from  NOMAD,  a CERN Neutrino Oscillation experiment. He also spent another year after the degree working on Neutrino Physics with prof. M. Baldo-Ceolin. Then he moved to the Perugia University where he worked in the prof. R. Battiston group as graduate student analyzing the AMS-01 data. He got his Ph.D. in 2003 at Perugia University defending a thesis about a model of the cosmic rays interaction with the Earth magnetosphere based on AMS-01 data. He worked as post-doc and then as research scientist for the Perugia branch of Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN),  with a major involvement of the AMS-02 project for what concerns the silicon tracker data acquisition and reconstruction software. He also took part to other projects aimed to support  the high luminosity phase of the LHC project.
He served  as ambulance driver at his hometown Red Cross unit.

Selected Publications

  • K. Lubelsmeyer et al. Upgrade of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) for long term operation on the International Space Station (ISS). NIM, A 654, 639-648, 2011.
  • G. Alberti and P. Zuccon, AMI: AMS Monitoring Interface, J. Phys., Conf. Ser. 331, 082008, 2011
  • B. Alpat et al., The internal alignment and position resolution of the AMS-02 silicon tracker determined with cosmic-ray muons, NIM, A 613, 207-217, 2010.
  • W. Scandale et al., Observation of Multiple Volume Reflection of Ultrarelativistic Protons by a Sequence of Several Bent Silicon Crystals, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 084801, 2009
  • W. Scandale et al. High-Efficiency Volume Reflection of an Ultrarelativistic Proton Beam with a Bent Silicon Crystal., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 154801, 2007.
  • J. Alcaraz et al., The alpha magnetic spectrometer silicon tracker: Performance results with protons and helium nuclei, NIM, A 593, 376-398,2008.
  • AMS-01 Collaboration (M. Aguilar et al.). Cosmic-ray positron fraction measurement from 1 to 30-GeV with AMS-01., Phys. Lett. B646 145-154, 2007.
  • P. Zuccon, et al., Atmospheric production of energetic protons, electrons and positrons observed in near earth orbit , Astropart., Phys.20:221-234,2003.
  • AMS Collaboration, The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on the International Space Station. I: Results from the test flight on the space shuttle, Phys.Rept. 366:331-405,2002,Erratum-ibid.380: 97-98,2003.
  • AMS Collaboration, Helium in near orbit, Phys. Lett. B 494, 193-202, 2000
  • NOMAD Collaboration A More sensitive search for neutrino(muon) ---> neutrino(tau) oscillations in NOMAD., Phys.Lett. B453:169-186,1999.

    Last updated: 04.01.2013