Scientific Curriculum

1992: Diploma in Physics at University of Milano
1992-1993: “freier mitarbaiter” at Max-Planck-Institut fuer Physik in Munich (Germany)
1996: PhD in Physics at University of Milano
1997-2001: INFN technical researcher
2001-present: Assistant Professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca

1992-1993: Development of massive low energy threshold detectors for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) searches at Max-Planck-Institut fuer Physik in Munich in Dr. S. Cooper group and in collaboration with Prof. R. L. Moessbauer group at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen.

• Setting up of a dilution refrigerator instrumented with SQUID amplifiers.
• Development of the first Transition Edge Sensors (TES) using tungsten superconducting films with critical temperatures as low as about 15 mK and construction of massive (up to 32g) high resolution sapphire detectors with tungsten TES. A FWHM energy resolution of about 100 eV at 1.5 keV was achieved.
• Development of one of the most successful models describing cryogenic detectors thermal response.
• Writing of the Proposal of the CRESST experiment at LNGS, with contribution to the preliminary investigation of the expected background by means of Monte Carlo simulations.

1993-2005: A direct neutrino mass experiment by measuring calorimetrically the 187Re decay with thermal microcalorimeters at University of Milano. The work was carried on starting from the PhD Thesis in the Prof. Fiorini group in Milano (1993-1996).

• Successful design, fabrication, characterization and optimization of silicon implanted thermistors in collaboration with irst-ITC (now Fondazione Bruno Kessler FBK) in Povo (Trento).
• Development of low noise cryogenic amplifiers with silicon JFETs
• Production and test of several microcalorimeters with tin and rhenium absorbers. This activity brought also to the selection of AgReO4 crystals between many dielectric rhenium compounds as absorbers for a neutrino mass experiment.
• Design, fabrication and running of several high resolution microcalorimeters using both silicon an germanium thermistors coupled to tin absorbers. The best FWHM energy resolution achieved at 6 keV with the two types of microcalorimeters is 14 and 5 eV, respectively. This latter result remained the worldwide best for energy dispersive spectrometers for few years.
• Design, installation, optimization and running of a calorimetric direct neutrino mass measurement using an array of 10 AgReO4 crystals coupled to silicon implanted thermistors. With about 4000 hours of live time a limit of about 15 eV at 90% CL was set on the neutrino mass. This is the most stringent limit after the one obtained measuring Tritium beta decay with electrostatic spectrometers.
• Detection and understanding of the Beta Environmental Fine Structure (BEFS) in beta spectra measured with the AgReO4 microcalorimeters.

1993-2008 Development of massive TeO2 low temperature detectors to search for the 130Te neutrinoless double beta decay (DBD-0nu) at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso underground site. The culmination of this activity is the Cuoricino experiment.

• Design, construction, optimization and running of two 330g TeO2 detector arrays at LNGS with 4 and 20 crystals, respectively. With these doctors it was possible to quickly improve the limit on the 130Te DBD-0nu half life.
• Array radioactive background investigation and interpretation by means of both material sample radioactive essays and Monte Carlo simulations
• Measurement of the response of thermal detectors to low ionizing nuclear recoils such as the ones caused by WIMPs elastic interactions
• Assessment of the 210Pb content in roman lead samples by means calorimetric measurement with lead absorber thermal detectors
• Design, construction, optimization and running of the Cuoricino experiment with 62 TeO2 crystals (the mass is about 330g and 770g, for 18 and 44 crystals respectively). The Cuoricino detector is largest cryogenic detector ever built. With a final exposure of about 16 kg x years it allowed to set a limit on the effective Majorana neutrino mass of 0.3-0.7 eV, the second most stringent limit after the one obtained with enriched Germanium detectors.

2004-2012: CUORE, Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events, the first 1 ton scale neutrinoless double beta decay experiment which will search for DBD-0nu of 130Te. CUORE is expected to start exploring the inverted hierarchy neutrino mass scale in 2013, possibly extending the sensitivity to as low as 0.05 eV.

• Proposal and design of the CUORE experiment.
• Design and production of the custom cryogenic system required to cool the 988 TeO2 thermal detector array and about 10 tons of lead shielding.

2005-2012 MARE (Microcalorimeters Array for a Rhenium Experiment) project, to realize a new large calorimetric experiment with arrays of thermal microcalorimeters to directly measure the neutrino mass with a sensitivity as low as 0.1 eV.

• Setting up of an advanced Cryogenic Laboratory for low temperature radiation detector development, at the Physics Department of the University of Milano-Bicocca.
• Design, installation and test of the set-up for a new neutrino mass experiment called MARE-1. It consists of 8 arrays developed by the Goddard Space Flight Centre/NASA for astrophysics X-ray spectroscopy with their 288 pixels coupled to AgReO4 crystals. A neutrino mass statistical sensitivity of few electronvolts is expected.

2011-present: Precision measurement of the 163Ho electron capture decay spectrum by using a small array high energy resolution low temperature Silicon implanted microcalorimeters, in collaboration with University of Genova.
The measurement aims at 1) defining the atomic and nuclear parameters relevant to a calorimetric neutrino mass end-point measurement, and 2) reach a neutrino mass statistical sensitivity of few tens of electronvolt.

2011-present: Development of superconducting micro-wave microresonator detector arrays for low temperature particle detection in next generation neutrino physics experiments.
The aim is to produce new detector technologies addressing the need for sensitive scalable arrays for the MARE project and for simultaneous light and heat detection in a future neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. The project is funded by Fondazione Cariplo.

• Coordinator of the CUORE Cryogenic Working Group, in charge of designing and setting up the cryogenic system for the CUORE experiment. It consists of a very powerful dilution refrigerator in low radioactivity large cryostat without cryogenic liquids. Cooling to 4K is achieved by using Pulse Tubes. The refrigerator will cool the CUORE 1 ton TeO2 array to about 10 mK, the lowest temperature ever reached with such a large mass.
• Technical Coordinator of MARE. The MARE project was jointly proposed in 2005 by the University of Genova group of Prof. F. Gatti (now spokesman) and the University of Milano-Bicocca group to which Dr. Angelo Nucciotti belongs. Since then several international institutions have joined the effort bringing together many different useful expertise.
• Local responsible for the INFN experiment MARE-RD in Milano-Bicocca. This activity aims at demonstrating the feasibility of the MARE project through the deployment of a 288 channel silicon implanted thermistor array with AgReO4 crystals in Milano-Bicocca.
• Responsible of the Cryogenic Laboratory at the Department of Physics of the University of Milano-Bicocca.
• Scientific Responsible of a grant “International Recruitment Call 2010 (ref. 2010-2351)” from Fondazione Cariplo for Development of Microresonator Detectors for Neutrino Physics. Duration: 36 months. Start date: 1st June 2011.

Dr. Angelo Nucciotti is co-author of 60 publications on international peer reviewed journals. He presented his work at more than 20 international conferences and workshops. He also gave 10 invited talks at international conferences and workshops on neutrinoless double beta decay, neutrino mass direct measurements and the thermal detection technique. He was invited to give seminars on his research at Wisconsin University in Madison (2009 and 1998), at Università dell'Insubria in Como (2005), at Tuebingen Universitaet (2004), at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1998), at Nuclear and Astrophysics Laboratory of Oxford University (1996), and at Max-Planck-Institut in Munich (1996).