Fabrizio Tamburini
Fabrizio Tamburini | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Italian |
| Known for | Superluminal Majorana neutrino model for the OPERA anomaly |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, Astronomy |
| Institutions | University of Padova |
Fabrizio Tamburini is an Italian physicist known for speculative work on relativity, neutrino physics and the orbital angular momentum of light. He is listed in The Worldwide List of Dissident Scientists.
Work
In 2011, working in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Padova, Tamburini (with M. Laveder of the Department of Physics) proposed a phenomenological model to account for the OPERA experiment's apparent measurement of faster-than-light neutrinos. In the paper "Apparent Lorentz violation with superluminal Majorana neutrinos at OPERA?" they introduced a Majorana neutrino state carrying a fictitious imaginary (complex) mass term, which they suggested could arise from interactions with the Earth's crust over the 735 km baseline, and argued the model was compatible with data from OPERA, MINOS and supernova SN1987a. The proposal was one of many speculative responses to the OPERA anomaly, which was later attributed to instrumental error; the idea of a complex neutrino mass lies well outside mainstream particle physics.
Tamburini has also published on the orbital angular momentum of light ("twisted" beams) and related topics in optics and astrophysics.