Rodolfo Del Sole

Professor of Quantum Theory of Solids

University of Rome "Tor Vergata"

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Curriculum vitae

Personal Data

Date of birth: 1944, June 19th
Place of birth: Rome, Italy
July 1969: "Laurea cum laude" in Physics at the University of Rome "La Sapienza"
Present position: Professor of "Quantum theory of solids" at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata"

Overview

Research activity since 1969 in SOLID STATE THEORY. Author of more than 200 articles in international journals.

Experience with the European Community:

Member of the Rome team participating in the ESPRIT Action no. 3177 (EPIOPTICS), May 1989 - April 1992
Member of the Rome team participating in the ESPRIT Action no. 6878 EASI (Epioptics Applied to Semiconductor Interfaces), May 1992 - April 1995
Coordinator of the HCM network EPSI (Electronic Properties of Semiconductors and Insulators: computing the behaviour of complex systems), contract no. CHRX- CT93-0337, November 1993 - June 1996
Coordinator of the Rome team partecipating to the Research Training Network NANOPHASE, June 2000 - May 2004, contract no. HPRN CT 2000 00167
Coordinator of the Rome team participating to the Network of Excellence "NanoQuanta", Contract n. NMP4-CT-2004-500198 started in June 2004

Research Experience

Rodolfo Del Sole (RDS) has managed several research grants, given by CNR, INFM, MIUR. He has supervised several PhD students and Post Docs. He has been director of the INFM research unit of Roma Tor Vergata from February 1998 to February 2003. He is director of the Physics Department of the University of Rome "Tor Vergata", a post he has held since January 2003.

RDS has been working on the theory of surface optical properties since 1981, and on many body theory of solids since 1987. He and his coworkers have carried out in 1986 the first realistic calculations of surface optical properties using semiempirical methods, and, later on, ab initio methods. They have carried out pioneering studies of many body effects within the Bethe-Salpeter equation formalism (which describes the electron-hole interaction) for the optical properties of clusters (1995), solids (1998) and surfaces (2000).

In the last years, they have collaborated with researchers in Paris (Lucia Reining), Milan (Giovanni Onida) and in San Sebastian (Angel Rubio) to apply Time Dependent Density Functional Theory ( TDDFT) to the calculation of optical and energy loss spectra by determining a suitable nonlocal approximation to the so called exchange correlation kernel, which is a fundamental ingredient of TDDFT. The results obtained are very good and this method, being faster than that based on the Bethe-Salpeter equation, will in the future allow the calculation of ab initio optical spectra in more complex systems.