Alessio Zaccone

Last updated
Alessio Zaccone
Born(1981-09-07)September 7, 1981
NationalityItalian
Alma mater
Known for
  • Krausser-Samwer-Zaccone equation
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics, Chemistry
Institutions
Thesis  (2010)
Doctoral advisor M. Morbidelli
Other academic advisors Eugene Terentjev, Hans Jürgen Herrmann

Alessio Zaccone (born 7 September 1981, Alessandria) is an Italian physicist. [1] [2]

Contents

Career and research

After a PhD at ETH Zurich, [3] he held faculty positions at Technical University Munich, [4] University of Cambridge [5] and at the Physics Department of the University of Milan. [6] In 2015 he was elected a Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge. [7]

Zaccone contributed to various areas of condensed matter physics.

He is known for his work on the atomic theory of elasticity and viscoelasticity of amorphous solids, [8] [9] in particular for having developed the microscopic theory of elasticity of random sphere packings and elastic random networks. [10] With Konrad Samwer he developed the Krausser–Samwer–Zaccone equation for the viscosity of liquids. [11] With Eugene Terentjev he developed a molecular-level theory of the glass transition based on thermoelasticity, which provides the molecular-level derivation of the Flory–Fox equation for the glass transition temperature of polymers. [12]

He is also known for having developed, in his PhD thesis, the extension of DLVO theory that describes the stability of colloidal systems in fluid dynamic conditions based on a new solution (developed using the method of matched asymptotic expansions) to the Smoluchowski convection–diffusion equation. [13] The predictions of the theory have been extensively verified experimentally by various research groups. Also in his PhD thesis, he developed a formula for the shear modulus of colloidal nanomaterials, [14] which has been confirmed experimentally in great detail. [15] In 2020 he discovered and mathematically predicted that the low-frequency shear modulus of confined liquids scales with inverse cubic power of the confinement size. [16]

In 2017 he was listed as one of the 37 most influential researchers worldwide (with less than 10–12 years of independent career) by the journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research published by the American Chemical Society. [17] In 2020 he was listed among the Emerging Leaders by the Journal of Physics published by the Institute of Physics. [8]

As of October 2023, he has published well over 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals, h-index=40. [1] [6]

In 2021 he led a team that theoretically predicted and computationally discovered well-defined topological defects as mediators of plasticity in amorphous solids. [18] This discovery has been later successfully confirmed independently by a research group led by Wei-Hua Wang and Walter Kob. [19]

In January 2022 he proposed an approximate solution for the random close packing problem in 2D and 3D, [20] which received multiple comments online. [21] [22] [23] [24]

Awards and honors

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

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Random close packing (RCP) of spheres is an empirical parameter used to characterize the maximum volume fraction of solid objects obtained when they are packed randomly. For example, when a solid container is filled with grain, shaking the container will reduce the volume taken up by the objects, thus allowing more grain to be added to the container. In other words, shaking increases the density of packed objects. But shaking cannot increase the density indefinitely, a limit is reached, and if this is reached without obvious packing into an ordered structure, such as a regular crystal lattice, this is the empirical random close-packed density for this particular procedure of packing. The random close packing is the highest possible volume fraction out of all possible packing procedures.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jamming (physics)</span>

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References

  1. 1 2 "Google Scholar profile".
  2. ↑ "Researchgate profile".
  3. ↑ Alessio Zaccone at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ↑ "Faculty appointment at TU Munich".
  5. ↑ "Faculty appointment at University of Cambridge". October 2015.
  6. 1 2 "Webpage at Unimi" (PDF).
  7. 1 2 "Election to a Fellowship of Queens' College, University of Cambridge".
  8. 1 2 3 "IoP Journal of Physiscs Emerging Leader".
  9. 1 2 "Alessio Zaccone elected as Gauss Professor".
  10. ↑ Zaccone, A.; Scossa-Romano, E. (2011). "Approximate analytical description of the nonaffine response of amorphous solids". Physical Review B. 83 (18): 184205. arXiv: 1102.0162 . Bibcode:2011PhRvB..83r4205Z. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.83.184205. S2CID   119256092.
  11. ↑ Krausser, J.; Samwer, K.; Zaccone, A. (2015). "Interatomic repulsion softness directly controls the fragility of supercooled metallic melts". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 112 (45): 13762–7. arXiv: 1510.08117 . Bibcode:2015PNAS..11213762K. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1503741112 . PMC   4653154 . PMID   26504208.
  12. ↑ Zaccone, A.; Terentjev, E. (2013). "Disorder-Assisted Melting and the Glass Transition in Amorphous Solids". Physical Review Letters. 110 (17): 178002. arXiv: 1212.2020 . Bibcode:2013PhRvL.110q8002Z. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.178002. PMID   23679782. S2CID   15600577.
  13. ↑ Zaccone, A.; Gentili, D.; Wu, H.; Morbidelli, M. (2009). "Theory of activated-rate processes under shear with application to shear-induced aggregation of colloids". Physical Review E. 80 (5): 051404. arXiv: 0906.4879 . Bibcode:2009PhRvE..80e1404Z. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.80.051404. hdl:2434/653702. PMID   20364982. S2CID   22763509.
  14. ↑ Zaccone, A.; Wu, H.; Del Gado, M. (2009). "Elasticity of Arrested Short-Ranged Attractive Colloids: Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Glasses". Physical Review Letters. 103 (20): 208301. arXiv: 0901.4713 . Bibcode:2009PhRvL.103t8301Z. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.208301. PMID   20366015. S2CID   1461005.
  15. ↑ Whitaker, K. A.; Varga, Z.; Hsiao, L. C.; Solomon, M. J.; Swan, J. W.; Furst, E. M. (2019). "Colloidal gel elasticity arises from the packing of locally glassy clusters". Nature Communications. 10 (1): 2237. Bibcode:2019NatCo..10.2237W. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-10039-w. PMC   6527676 . PMID   31110184.
  16. ↑ Zaccone, A.; Trachenko, K. (2020). "Explaining the low-frequency shear elasticity of confined liquids". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 117 (33): 19653–19655. arXiv: 2007.11916 . doi: 10.1073/pnas.2010787117 . PMC   7443959 . PMID   32747540.
  17. 1 2 Savage, Phillip E. (27 September 2017). "ACS I&ECR Influential Researcher". Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. 56 (38): 10515. doi:10.1021/acs.iecr.7b03758.
  18. ↑ Baggioli, M.; Kriuchevskyi, I.; Sirk, T. W.; Zaccone, A. (2021). "Plasticity in Amorphous Solids Is Mediated by Topological Defects in the Displacement Field". Physical Review Letters. 127: 015501. arXiv: 2101.05529 . doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.015501.
  19. ↑ Wu, Z. W.; Chen, Y.; Wang, W.-H.; Kob, W.; Xu, L. (2023). "Topology of vibrational modes predicts plastic events in glasses". Nature Communications. 14: 2955. doi:10.1038/s41467-023-38547-w. PMC   10209080 .
  20. ↑ Zaccone, Alessio (2022-01-12). "Explicit Analytical Solution for Random Close Packing in $d=2$ and $d=3$". Physical Review Letters. 128 (2): 028002. arXiv: 2201.04541 . doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.028002. PMID   35089741. S2CID   245877616.
  21. ↑ Chen, D.; Ni, R. (2022). "Comment on "Explicit Analytical Solution for Random Close Packing in d=2 and d=3"". arXiv: 2201.06129 [cond-mat.soft].
  22. ↑ Charbonneau, P.; Morse, P. (2022). "Comment on "Explicit Analytical Solution for Random Close Packing in d=2 and d=3"". arXiv: 2201.07629 [cond-mat.stat-mech].
  23. ↑ Blumenfeld, R. (2022). "Comment on "Explicit Analytical Solution for Random Close Packing in d=2 and d=3", Physical Review Letters {\bf 128}, 028002 (2022)". arXiv: 2201.10550 [cond-mat.dis-nn].
  24. ↑ Till Kranz, W. (2022). "Comment on "Explicit Analytical Solution for Random Close Packing in d=2 and d=3"". arXiv: 2204.13901 [cond-mat.soft].
  25. ↑ "Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship" (PDF).
  26. ↑ "Physics Department, TUM | 2014-07-22". www.ph.tum.de. Retrieved 2022-01-21.
  27. ↑ "University of Cambridge press release". 6 October 2017.
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