Gian Michele Innocenti
Massachusetts Institute of Technology · Physics
Active 1970–2024
About
Gian Michele Innocenti is an experimental physicist whose research focuses on characterizing novel regimes of Quantum-Chromo Dynamics by exploring collisions of ultra-relativistic heavy ions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). He has developed innovative analysis techniques and data-acquisition strategies to perform novel measurements of open heavy-flavor production in heavy-ion collisions. His research has shed new light on the nature of QCD matter at high temperatures, known as Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), and the mechanisms of hadron formation in this extreme environment. In his current research at MIT, he designs and employs new jet-substructure and correlation observables to characterize the modification of the heavy-quark parton shower in the QGP. He has recently started a new experimental program to study nuclear matter at low-x nuclei with measurements of gamma-nucleus and gamma-gamma scatterings in ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions. These studies will provide some of the most accurate experimental constraints on the emergence of a gluon-saturated form of nuclear matter and pave the way for future measurements at the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). Innocenti is leading a new hardware program to exploit CMOS technology to build a high-accuracy tracker detector for the ePIC experiment at the EIC.
Research topics
- Nuclear physics
- Physics
- Particle physics
- Quantum mechanics
Selected publications
Extraction and validation of a new set of CMS pythia8 tunes from underlying-event measurements
The European Physical Journal C · 2020 · 407 citations
- Physics
- Particle physics
- Nuclear physics
New sets of CMS underlying-event parameters ("tunes") are presented for the pythia8 event generator. These tunes use the NNPDF3.1 parton distribution functions (PDFs) at leading (LO), next-to-leading (NLO), or next-to-next-to-leading (NNLO) orders in perturbative quantum chromodynamics, and the strong coupling evolution at LO or NLO. Measurements of charged-particle multiplicity and transverse momentum densities at various hadron collision energies are fit simultaneously to determine the parameters of the tunes. Comparisons of the predictions of the new tunes are provided for observables sensitive to the event shapes at LEP, global underlying event, soft multiparton interactions, and double-parton scattering contributions. In addition, comparisons are made for observables measured in various specific processes, such as multijet, Drell-Yan, and top quark-antiquark pair production including jet substructure observables. The simulation of the underlying event provided by the new tunes is interfaced to a higher-order matrix-element calculation. For the first time, predictions from pythia8 obtained with tunes based on NLO or NNLO PDFs are shown to reliably describe minimum-bias and underlying-event data with a similar level of agreement to predictions from tunes using LO PDF sets.
Frequent coauthors
- 963 shared
M. Guilbaud
Nantes Université
- 795 shared
A. Baldisseri
Institut de Recherche sur les Lois Fondamentales de l'Univers
- 786 shared
E. Conte
Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien
- 780 shared
C. Collard
Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien
- 779 shared
C. Bernet
Institut de Physique des 2 Infinis de Lyon
- 779 shared
M. Lethuillier
Institute of Nuclear Physics of Lyon
- 779 shared
J. Andreä
Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien
- 774 shared
D. Blöch
Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien
Labs
MIT Physics - Gian Michele InnocentiPI
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