Davide Racco

I am interested in topics at the crossover between Particle Physics and Cosmology, focusing in particular on dark matter, gravitational waves, 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, 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. Their potential discovery would disclose precious information on the cosmology of the early universe, and the particle content at high energy scales. I have also worked on the metastability of the Higgs potential: if we extrapolate to high energies the predictions of the Standard Model, the electroweak vacuum appears to be a metastable minimum of the potential. The fact that we live nonetheless in that vacuum today has important implications for the history of the early Universe. As potential observational signatures, I have studied the generation of Primordial Black Holes, of a stochastic background of Gravitational Waves, and a peculiar imprint on the correlation functions of Large Scale Structures.