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Dott. DAVIDE RACCO

Qualifica	Ricercatore tempo det. Legge 240/2010
Settore Scientifico Disciplinare	PHYS-02/A
Email	davide.racco@uniroma3.it
Indirizzo	Via della Vasca Navale 84
Struttura/Afferenza	Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica
Altre informazioni	Sito web personale

Profilo

Titoli e cariche

• Jan 2026 - present: Tenure-track professor (RTDb) at Roma Tre University with the grant "Rita Levi-Montalcini" from the Italian Ministry for Research
• Jul 2023 - Dec 2025: Joint Postdoctoral appointment in the Theoretical Cosmology group at ETH Zurich and the Theory of Fundamental Interactions group at the University of Zurich.
• Oct 2021 - Jun 2023: Postdoctoral Fellow in the Particle Physics group at SITP (Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, USA)
• Oct 2018 - Sep 2021: Postdoctoral Fellow in the Particle Physics group at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (Waterloo, Canada).
• Oct 2014 - Sep 2018: PhD degree from the University of Geneva under the supervision of Antonio Riotto in the Cosmology group.
  During my PhD I spent six months (Apr-Sep 2017) at IFAE in the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona to collaborate with José Ramón Espinosa.
• Oct 2009 - Jul 2014: Undergraduate and Master studies in the University of Padova and in the Galilean School of Higher Education.
  Master thesis carried under the supervision of Fabio Zwirner and Andrea Wulzer.

Didattica

I am interested in topics at the crossover between Particle Physics and Cosmology, focusing in particular on dark matter, gravitational waves, non-Gaussianities, Higgs metastability and early universe.
My main area of interest is Dark Matter, and I have worked on various classes of candidates, ranging from WIMPs (particles with masses and interaction strengths comparable to the Standard Model particles, who are currently the target of many experimental searches) to Primordial Black Holes (hypothetical black holes that could have formed in the early history of the Universe) and axions (particles which would also solve the strong CP problem in particle physics). Concerning the production mechanism for Dark Matter, recently I have been studying gravitational production during inflation, which is a well-motivated and minimal scenario and
can guide the identification of benchmarks for direct detection.
I am also very interested in stochastic backgrounds of primordial Gravitational Waves (GW). Their potential discovery would disclose precious information on the cosmology of the early universe, and the particle content at high energy scales. In particular, I have contributed to the study of GW backgrounds generated by large scalar perturbations, and I have highlighted the remarkable properties of the low-frequency spectrum (causality tail) of a wide class of primordial sources of GW backgrounds.
Finally, I have also explored various axpects of the physics of the inflationary universe, and its discovery potential in relation to the instability of the Higgs in the Standard Model, both as a minimal signature at the cosmological collider and as a possible source of primordial black holes and a GW background.

Ricerca

I am interested in topics at the crossover between Particle Physics and Cosmology, focusing in particular on dark matter, gravitational waves, non-Gaussianities, Higgs metastability and early universe.
My main area of interest is Dark Matter, and I have worked on various classes of candidates, ranging from WIMPs (particles with masses and interaction strengths comparable to the Standard Model particles, who are currently the target of many experimental searches) to Primordial Black Holes (hypothetical black holes that could have formed in the early history of the Universe) and axions (particles which would also solve the strong CP problem in particle physics). Concerning the production mechanism for Dark Matter, recently I have been studying gravitational production during inflation, which is a well-motivated and minimal scenario and
can guide the identification of benchmarks for direct detection.
I am also very interested in stochastic backgrounds of primordial Gravitational Waves (GW). Their potential discovery would disclose precious information on the cosmology of the early universe, and the particle content at high energy scales. In particular, I have contributed to the study of GW backgrounds generated by large scalar perturbations, and I have highlighted the remarkable properties of the low-frequency spectrum (causality tail) of a wide class of primordial sources of GW backgrounds.
Finally, I have also explored various axpects of the physics of the inflationary universe, and its discovery potential in relation to the instability of the Higgs in the Standard Model, both as a minimal signature at the cosmological collider and as a possible source of primordial black holes and a GW background.