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I am expert in the areas of high energy experimental physics (in particular in the field of neutrino physics) cosmic ray physics and gravitational waves.

•1970- 1984 Initially my field of interest was connected with experiments performed at the electron positron storage rings ADONE and PEP, located in Frascati (Italy) and Stanford (USA). I was in one of the teams that discovered the J/PSI particle in Frascati, in November 1974, a few days after Stanford and Brokhaven.

The main results obtained in Adone with the MEA experiment, were connected to tests of quantum electrodynamics, measurement of multi-hadron production and searches for other narrow resonances like the J/PSI. In Stanford I have worked to the PEP14 experiment dedicated to the free quark searches and to the MAC general purpose detector. Analyzing the MAC data I have seen, for the first time in the world, the asymmetry in the jet production due to the Z particle.

•1984-2004. After 1984 my field of interest has switched to cosmic ray physics and particle physics without the use of accelerators in underground experiments

I was one of the proponents of the MACRO Italian–US experiment at the Gran Sasso laboratory Italy for the search of monopoles, the study of cosmic rays, the study of neutrino oscillations and of neutrino and cosmic ray astronomy. Within the MACRO collaboration, I was the coordinator of the data acquisition working group and the coordinator of the neutrino physics working group.

I have presented the neutrino data of the MACRO collaboration at the historical Neutrino 98 conference in Takayama (Japan). This conference is considered now the conference in which it was established that the neutrino mass is different from zero. The MACRO data, together with data from SOUDAN2 and SuperKamiokande, were crucial to reach this conclusion.

•1992-2010. Since 1992 I have started to work on the search for gravitational waves using aluminum resonant cylinders at very low temperature, joining to the ROG gravitational wave group. I had the responsibility to study the noise due to cosmic rays.

In 1999 we have detected, for the first time in the world, cosmic rays using the NAUTILUS gravitational bar detector, located in Frascati. We have found some unexpected very large signal. To study this problem we have proposed in 2002 an experiment using a particle beam to study the acoustic excitation on an aluminum bar cooled at 0.1 Kelvin. This experiment has done measurements with aluminum and niobium in normal and superconductive state, showing that in aluminum in superconductive state larger signals are produced confirming the observation of cosmic rays with the gravitational wave antennas.

• 2011-now. Since my retirement at the end of 2010 I have continued to do research as INFN associate. I have analyzed the data of the gravitational wave detector Nautilus and Explorer to search quark nuggets dark matter.

I have joined the JEM_EUSO collaboration for a space experiment dedicated to the study of the very high energy cosmic rays. My main interest in this experiment is for the search of dark matter with a prototype called MINI-EUSO. At the same time I have done dome several reanalysis of the MACRO data to take into account

new results in the field and I have continued to follow the progress in neutrino oscillations.

Publications

I am the author of about 334 publications. Two papers have more than 500 citations (the J/PSI paper and the paper on the atmospheric neutrino oscillations) and two papers have more than 250 citations (the paper on the B lifetimes and the paper on neutrino matter effect).

From the INSPIRE Data Base:

From Google scholar

Francesco Ronga Junior