ICRANet

ICRA and ICRANet

In 1985, the ICRA Center was founded in Rome ^[1] ( International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics - the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics ). The founders were Remo Ruffini ( La Sapienza ) and Riccardo Giacconi ( Nobel Laureate in Physics 2002 ^[2] ), Abdus Salam (Nobel Laureate in Physics 1979 ^[3] ), Paul Boynton ( Eng. Paul Boynton , University of Washington ), (former director of the Vatican Observatory ), Stanford University ], Fan Lichzhi ( ).

The constituent documents of ICRANet were signed on March 19, 2003 and ratified in the same year by Armenia and the Vatican . Formally, ICRANet was created in 2005 by Italian law, ratified by parliament and signed by Italian President Carlo Azello Ciampi on February 10, 2005 ^[4] . The founding members of the organization are Armenia, Italy, Vatican, ICRA, University of Arizona (USA) and Stanford University (USA).

On September 12, 2005, the first meeting of the ICRANet Steering Committee took place . Remo Ruffini and Fan Lichzhi were appointed Director and Chair of the Steering Committee, respectively. The first meeting of the Scientific Committee took place in Washington on December 19, 2006, at which Riccardo Giacconi was elected Chairman of the Committee, and John Mester ( Co-Chair ) .

On September 21, 2005, ICRANet Director and Brazilian Ambassador to Italy Dante Coelho De Lima ( port of Dante Coelho De Lima ) signed a memorandum of association between Brazil and ICRANet. Brazil’s entry into the organization, supported by President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva , was unanimously ratified by Parliament and signed on 12 August 2011 by President Dilma Rousseff ^[5] .

Marcel Grossman Congresses

By the beginning of the 20th century, the efforts of G. Ricci-Courbastro and Tullio Levi-Civita created a new direction in mathematics, tensor calculus . Marcel Grossman from the University of Zurich , who was well acquainted with the Italian school of geometry, was a friend of Einstein and introduced him to these concepts when they were needed to develop the theory of relativity. Their collaboration was in creating a general theory of relativity .

To develop such an important interaction between physics and mathematics and in honor of this historical collaboration, Remo Ruffini and Abdus Salam in 1975 established a series of Congresses named after Marcel Grossman on new achievements in the theoretical and experimental general theory of relativity, gravity and relativistic field theories . Grossmann meeting (MG) on Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Gravitation, and Relativistic Field Theories ) ^[6] , which have since been held every three years in different countries. MG1 and MG2 1975 and 1979 were held in Trieste ; MG3, 1982 - in Shanghai , China; MG4, 1985 - in Rome ; MG5, 1988 - in Perth , Australia; MG6, 1991 - in Kyoto , Japan; MG7, 1994 - at Stanford , California ; MG8, 1997 - in Jerusalem , Israel; MG9, 2000 - in Rome; MG10, 2003 - in Rio de Janeiro , Brazil; MG11, 2006 - in Berlin , Germany; MG12, 2009 - in Paris , France; MG13, 2012 - in Stockholm , Sweden; MG14, 2015 and MG15, 2018 - in Rome. These conferences attract over 1,000 participants. Since its inception, ICRANet has played a leading role in organizing these congresses.

International Year of Astronomy 2009

ICRANet was the associated organizer of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009 ) ^[8] and financially supported the global coordination of IYA2009. In honor of this, ICRANet organized a series of international conferences ^[9] under the general title "The Sun, the Star, the Universe and General Relativity" (The Sun, Stars, Universe and General Theory of Relativity), including:

• the first conference in memory of Zeldovich ( born the 1st Zeldovich meeting ) ^[10] ( Minsk , Belarus ),
• Sobral Conference ( Eng. The Sobral Meeting ) ^[11] ( Fortaleza , Brazil),
• the first Galileo and Xu Guangqi conference ( Eng. the 1st Galileo - Xu Guangqi meeting ) ^[12] ( Shanghai , China),
• The 11th Italian-Korean Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics ( Eng. The 11th Italian-Korean Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics ) ^[13] ( Seoul , Korea),
• 5th Austrolysian Christchurch Conference ( eng. The 5th Australasian Conference - Christchurch Meeting ) ^[14] ( Christchurch , New Zealand ).

International Year of Light 2015

The year 2015 was declared by the UN and UNESCO as the International Year of the World , in addition, this year marks one hundred years of the final formulation of the equations of general theory of relativity ^[15] , and 50 years of relativistic astrophysics. ICRANet was a “Bronze Associate” ( Bronze Associate ) ^[16] and sponsored the celebration of these events. In 2015, a series of international conferences was organized ^[17] , including:

• the second conference in memory of Cesar Lattes ( Eng. the Second ICRANet César Lattes Meeting ) ^[18] ( Niterói - Rio de Janeiro - João Pessoa - Recife - Fortaleza , Brazil),
• International Conference on Gravity and Cosmology ^[19] / Fourth Galileo-Xu Guangqi meeting ^[20] ( Beijing , China),
• XIV Congress named after Marcel Grossman ( English Fourteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting ) ^[21] - MG14 (Rome, Italy),
• the first ICRANet Julio Garavito Meeting on Relativistic Astrophysics ICRANet conference on relativistic astrophysics ^[22] ( Bucaramanga - Bogotá , Colombia),
• the first Caribbean Conference on Relativistic Astrophysics named after Sandoval Vallarta ( Eng. the 1st Sandoval Vallarta Caribbean Meeting on Relativistic Astrophysics ) ^[23] (Mexico City, Mexico).

ICRANet consists of a director, a steering committee and a scientific committee. Committee members represent participating countries and organizations. ICRANet also has a number of permanent research staff and rates for visiting researchers. Their work is supported by the efforts of administrative staff and secretaries. The financing of ICRANet, according to the constituent documents, comes from the budgets of the countries and participating organizations, as well as from voluntary donations.

Director of ICRANet from the foundation of the organization to the present (2016) is Professor Remo Ruffini .

In 2018, the steering committee included the following members ^[24] :

• Armenia: Hayk Harutyunyan
• Brazil:
• Vatican:
• Italy:
  1. Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs : Fabrizio Nicoletti, Enrico Padula, Immacolata Pannone ( Italian: Fabrizio Nicoletti, Enrico Padula, Immacolata Pannone )
  2. Italian Ministry of Economics and Finance : Antonio Bartolini, Salvatore Sebastiano Vizzini ( Italian: Antonio Bartolini, Salvatore Sebastiano Vizzini )
  3. Ministry of Education, Universities and Scientific Research (Italy) : Vincenzo Di Felice, Juliet Iorio ( Italian: Vincenzo Di Felice, Giulietta Iorio )
  4. Pescara Municipality: Carlo Mashi ( Italian: Carlo Masci )
• ICRA: Remo Ruffini
• Stanford University: Francis Everitt - Chairman
• University of Arizona:

The first chairman of the scientific committee was Riccardo Giacconi, the 2002 Nobel Laureate in Physics, who retired in 2013. Then became the chairman, and now (2018) he is Massimo Della Valle. In 2018, the scientific committee consisted of ^[25] : Professor Narek Sahakyan (Armenia), Dr. Carlo Luciano Bianco ( Italian: Carlo Luciano Bianco ) (ICRA), Professor Massimo Della Valle ( Italian: Massimo Della Valle ) (Italy), Professor John Mester ( born John Mester ) (Stanford University), Professor (University of Arizona), Dr. Gabriele Gonti ( Italian: Gabriele Gionti ) (Vatican).

The permanent research team for 2018 consists of professors Ulisses Barres de Almeida ( port Ulisses Barres de Almeida ) , Vladimir Belinsky , Donato Bini, Carlo Luciano Bianco, Grigory Vereshchagin, Robert Jantzen, Christian Kerubini, Roy Patrick Kerr , Marco Occiucino , Brian Matthew Pansley, Giovanni Pisani, Remo Ruffini, Jorge Rueda ( Spanish Jorge Rueda ) , Philippi Simonetta, She-Sheng Xue and Pascal Chardonnay ^[26] . About 30 people are temporary members of ICRANet, and there are about 80 lecturers and visiting professors. Among them are Nobel laureates Riccardo Giacconi, Murray Gell-Mann , Theodor Hensch , Gerard 't Hooft and Stephen Weinberg .

Member Countries and Organizations

In 2018, 4 countries and three universities or research centers were members of ICRANet.

Participating countries:

Participating organizations:

For 2018, ICRANet has signed cooperation agreements with 57 organizations, including universities and research institutes in various countries around the world ^[27] .

ICRANet Branches and Centers

The network consists of offices and centers. Contracts for the establishment of ICRANet branches, including special rights, in particular the extraterritoriality of the branches, were signed for the focal point in Pescara, Italy, for the branch in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and for the branch in Yerevan, Armenia. The agreement on the focal point in Pescara was ratified by the Italian parliament on May 13, 2010 ^[28] , and the separation agreement in Yerevan was ratified by the Armenian parliament on November 13, 2015 ^{[29] [30]} .

ICRANet is part of the pan-European network for the exchange of data for research and education , and the focal point is connected to the Italian optical network .

In 2018, ICRANet centers operate in:

• Pescara, Italy - focal point;
• Rome, Italy - on the basis of ICRA and the Faculty of Physics, University of Rome La Sapienza ;
• Nice, France - in Villa Ratti ( fr. Villa Ratti ) ;
• Yerevan, Armenia - on the basis of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia ;
• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - based at the ;
• Isfahan, Iran - based on the Isfahan University of Technology ;
• Minsk, Belarus - at the Institute of Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus .

ICRANet Centers in Pescara, Rome and Nice

The ICRANet focal point is located in Pescara , Italy. It usually hosts annual meetings of the scientific and steering committees of the organization. The center is equipped with a conference room and a meeting room, so international conferences are regularly held there, for example, Italian-Korean symposia on relativistic astrophysics ^[31] . The scientific work at the center in Pescara includes fundamental research in the field of early cosmology - approaching the singularity - within the framework of the school of Vladimir Belinsky.

The ICRANet Center in Nice coordinates the IRAP-PhD PhD program and also develops super-high energy observational astrophysics in collaboration with the and the VLT through the Cote d'Azur Observatory . Savoy University has close ties with CERN .

ICRANet Center in Armenia

Since January 2014, the ICRANet Center in Yerevan has been located in the assignment of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia ^[32] . The scientific work of the center is coordinated by Dr. Narek Sahakyan and proceeds in close collaboration with other institutes of the Academy of Sciences and universities, which includes the joint organization of international conferences and symposiums, summer schools for graduate students and a mobility program for astrophysicists. ICRANet Center in Armenia coordinates the organization’s activities in Central Asia and the Middle East.

In 2014, the Armenian government signed a preliminary agreement on the establishment of the ICRANet international center in Armenia. The final agreement was signed on February 14, 2015 in Rome by ICRANet Director Remo Ruffini and Armenian Ambassador to Italy Sargis Gazaryan. On November 13, 2015, it was unanimously ratified by the Armenian Parliament ^{[29] [33]} .

From June 28 to July 4, 2014, a summer school and an international conference on relativistic astrophysics, "The First Scientific Conference of ICRANet in Armenia: Black Holes - the Biggest Energy Sources in the Universe" ( English 1st Scientific ICRANet Meeting in Armenia: Black Holes), were organized in Armenia. : the largest energy sources in the Universe ) ^{[34] [35]} .

ICRANet Center in Brazil

The ICRANet Center in Rio de Janeiro operates on the basis of the with the possible expansion into the building of the former , after which the urka process is named. In 2015, a second Cesar Lattes conference was held in Rio de Janeiro ^[18] . A regular summer school in cosmology and astrophysics is held with the aim of exchanging experience and training in new sections of astrophysics, cosmology and related fields for Brazilian and Latin American scientists.

By 2018, ICRANet has signed cooperation agreements with 17 Brazilian universities, organizations and research centers ^[36] .

The activities of the center in Brazil are focused on two programs:

• the possible restoration of the mountain part of as a new building for the ICRANet center in Brazil and South America (designed by Italian architect Carlo Serafini ( Italian: Carlo Serafini ) ),
• the creation of the , a new astrophysical database, which is the development of the ideas of the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC) of the Italian Space Agency and represents a unique research infrastructure on the verge of experimental and theoretical astrophysics.

US ICRANet Centers

Francis Everitt, Chair of the ICRANet Steering Committee, is the head of the center at Stanford University . The center’s many-year research program has focused on the concept, development, launch, acquisition and processing of data to determine the relativistic effects of the NASA Gravity Probe B space program, one of the most complex space experiments.

The first chairman of the ICRANet management committee, Fan Lizhi, established a partnership with the Department of Physics at the University of Arizona at Tucson . Collaboration with the faculty of astronomy is being developed by .

ICRANet Center in Minsk

The ICRANet-Minsk Center was founded by the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus in April 2017 ^[37] as part of the implementation of a cooperation agreement between ICRANet and the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, signed in 2016 as part of an earlier partnership agreement (2013) ^{[38] [39]} . It is located at the Institute of Physics of the NAS of Belarus and is engaged in research in astrophysics and gravity. Based on it, with the support of ICRANet, astrophysical scientific conferences are held: “First ICRANet-Minsk workshop on high energy astrophysics” (April 26–28, 2017), 3rd International Scientific Conference dedicated to the memory of Y. B. Zeldovich “Subparticles, Nuclei, Atoms ; Universe: processes and structure ”- SNAUPS-2018 (April 23–27, 2018, with financial support from the ) ^{[40] [41]} . The Republic of Belarus is in the process of joining ICRANet ^[37] .

ICRANet Center in Isfahan

The ICRANet Center in Esfahan was founded at Isfahan University of Technology in December 2016 in accordance with the protocol on cooperation signed in the same year. The center conducts and popularizes research and development in the field of cosmology, gravity and relativistic astrophysics, as well as organizes scientific conferences and exchange programs for students, researchers and university employees ^[42] .

Since 2005, ICRANet has been one of the organizers of the international Ph.D. Relativistic Astrophysics Programs International Relativistic Astrophysics Ph.D. Program ”or“ IRAP-PhD ” ^[43] , in collaboration with (2018):

• National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia ,
• World Academy of Sciences ,
• ASI - Italian Space Agency - Italy,
• CAPES - ,
• CBPF - - Rio de Janeiro (Brazil),
• CNR - - Italy,
• FAPERJ - - Rio de Janeiro (Brazil),
• ICRA - - Rome (Italy),
• ICTP - Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics - Trieste (Italy),
• IHES - Institute for Higher Scientific Research - Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques - Bourg-sur-Yvette (France),
• INFN - National Institute of Nuclear Physics - Italy,
• SHAO - - China,
• - Calcutta (India),
• Cote d'Azur Observatory - Nice, France,
• Tartu Observatory - Estonia,
• University of Bremen - Germany,
• University of Oldenburg - Germany,
• - Italy,
• University of Nice - Sophia Antipolis - France,
• University of Rome La Sapienza - Italy,
• - Mexico City (Mexico),
• - France.

The IRAP PhD program provides the first of its kind joint Ph.D. degree between participating institutions, and at one time was part of the European Commission's Erasmus Mundus program ^[44] .

In the 2020s, the international scientific community will be involved in a series of large astronomical projects, such as the construction of large E-ELT , SKA and CTA telescopes , which will study high-energy astrophysical phenomena from Earth. The IRAP-PhD program developed by ICRANet aims to create a new generation of researchers, leaders in their field of astrophysics, who will use these tools ^[45] . Therefore, the program includes a network of universities and research centers that offer graduate students a set of complementary competencies. Graduate students of the program work in teams of laboratories of members of the consortium and every year on mobility programs make visits to other centers to keep abreast of recent events and meet with leading experts in the fields of general theory of relativity, relativistic astrophysics, cosmology and quantum field theory.

Among the program participants there are both theoretical and experimental laboratories, which allows graduate students, in addition to theoretical training, to get an idea of ​​how space missions and campaigns for collecting astronomical data from the Earth are made ^[46]

The official language of the program is English, but graduate students have the opportunity to also learn the language of the country of the host organization, for which language courses are organized.

By 2018, 122 graduate students passed through the IRAP-PhD program: 1 from Albania, 4 from Argentina, 8 from Armenia, 1 from Austria, 2 from Belarus, 16 from Brazil, 5 from Germany, 7 from India, 2 from Iran, 38 from Italy, 2 from Kazakhstan, 5 from China, 9 from Colombia, 1 from Lebanon, 1 from Mexico, 1 from Pakistan, 4 from Russia, 1 from Saudi Arabia, 1 from Serbia, 2 from Taiwan, 1 from Turkey, 1 from Ukraine , 5 from France, 3 from Croatia, 1 from Switzerland, 1 from Sweden ^[47] .

The purpose of ICRANet is education and research in the field of relativistic astrophysics.

The main activity of ICRANet is aimed at the development of ; for these purposes, the organization leads or supports many projects in the field of relativistic asrophysics, cosmology, theoretical and mathematical physics.

The main areas of research ICRANet ^[48] :

• Gamma radiation and neutrinos of “space accelerators”;
• Exact solutions of the Einstein and Einstein – Maxwell equations;
• Gamma-ray bursts ;
• Relativistic effects in physics and astrophysics;
• Big data in physics and astrophysics;
• Cosmology and the large-scale structure of the Universe ;
• Theoretical ;
• Generalizations of the Kerr-Newman decision ;
• Black holes and quasars ;
• Electron-positron pairs in physics and astrophysics;
• From cores to compact stars ;
• Supernovae ;
• ;
• Self-gravitating systems, structures and dynamics of galaxies;
• Interdisciplinary studies of complex systems.

Between 2006 and early 2015, ICRANet produced over 1800 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals such as the Physical Review , Astrophysical Journal , Astronomy and Astrophysics and so on.

New scientific concepts and terms introduced by ICRANet member researchers

• Black Hole (Ruffini, Wheeler 1971) ^[49]
• Ergosphere (Rees, Ruffini, Wheeler, 1974) ^[50]
• Chasing and Diving (Rees, Ruffini, Wheeler, 1974) ^[50]
• The mass formula of black holes (Christodoulou, Ruffini, 1971) ^[51]
• Reversible and irreversible processes with black holes (Christodoulou, Ruffini, 1971) ^[51]
• Diadosphere ( Eng. Dyadosphere ) (Damour, Ruffini, 1975; Preparata, Ruffini, Xue, 1998) ^{[52] [53]}
• Dyadotorus ( Eng. Dyadotorus ) (Cherubini et al., 2009) ^[54]
• Induced Gravational Collapse ( Eng. Induced Graviational Collapse ) (Rueda, Ruffini, 2012) ^[55]
• Binary-driven hypernova ( born Binary-driven Hypernova ) (Ruffini et al., 2014) ^[56]
• Cosmic matrix (Ruffini et al., 2015) ^[57]

International Conferences

Italian-Korean Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics

This is a series of meetings held either in Italy or in Korea, beginning in 1987 ^[58] . Their goal is an accelerated exchange of information, as well as increased cooperation between Korean and Italian astrophysicists on new and most pressing issues of relativistic astrophysics. Symposiums cover such topics of cosmology and astrophysics as: gamma-ray bursts and compact stars, high-energy cosmic rays, dark energy and dark matter, general theory of relativity, black holes and new physics related to cosmology.

Galilee-Xu Guangzi Forums

The Galileo-Xu Guangzi Forums ^[59] were created to provide East and West scientists with the opportunity to exchange experiences in the field of astrophysics and related fundamental, theoretical and experimental fields once a year.

Xu Guangqi , a colleague of Matteo Ricci (Li Ma-dou), is known mainly because he brought the works of Euclid and Galileo Galilei to China, as well as for his significant contribution to the modernization and development of Chinese science. The meetings are dedicated to recalling the historical roots of modern methods of scientific research in the West and East, and to the recent progress of relativistic astrophysics. The first Galileo-Xu Guangqi forum was held in China in Shanghai in 2009 ^[60] . The second forum was held at the in the city of Ventimiglia in Italy and at Villa Ratti in France in Nice in 2010. The third and fourth forums were held in Beijing, China, in 2011 and 2015, respectively.

Stückelberg Seminars on Relativistic Field Theories

These seminars are a week-long platform for exchanging views on topics of relativistic field theories in curved space, they were inspired by the works of E. K. G. Stückelberg and were named after him ^[61] . Among the invited lecturers at these seminars were Abei Ashtekar , Thomas Tiemann ( German: Thomas Thiemann ) , Gerard 't Hooft and Hagen Kleinert .

Zeldovich conferences

A series of such conferences is held in Minsk, the birthplace of Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich , in honor of this chemist, physicist and astrophysicist, one of the founders of the Soviet school of relativistic astrophysics. The conference theme includes the whole legacy of Zeldovich: from chemical physics and physics of the nucleus and elementary particles to astrophysics and cosmology. By 2018, 3 such conferences were held: the 1st in 2009 on the basis of the Belarusian State University , the 2nd anniversary, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Zeldovich, in 2014 and the 3rd in 2018 at the National Academy Sciences of Belarus (with financial support from the Central European Initiative).

Other events

ICRANet also organized:

• six Italian-Chinese seminars ^[62] on cosmology and relativistic astrophysics, held in Pescara, every year from 2004 to 2009, except for the fifth, which hosted the city of Taipei in Taiwan in 2008;
• two ICRANet conferences named after Cesar Lattes ^[63] and The 1st URCA meeting on Relativistic Astrophysics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Postgraduate Lecture Programs

Within the framework of the IRAP PhD program, ICRANet organizes lecture courses and schools for graduate students, in particular, 17 training programs were implemented in Nice and Les Houches (France), Ferrara and Pescara (Italy), and Beijing (China) ^[64] .

ICRANet Programs

ICRANet runs long and short visit programs for scientific collaboration ^[65] .

Among the prominent people who participated in the ICRA and ICRANet programs were such as: I. M. Khalatnikov , former director of the Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics ; Roy Kerr , discoverer of Kerr's decision ; ; Demetrios Christodoulou ; Hagen Kleinert ; and John Bakal; ; Charles Mizner ; ; Fan Lichzhi ; R. A. Sunyaev .

Weekly Workshops

ICRANet participates in the organization of joint seminars on astrophysics at the Faculty of Physics of the University of La Sapienza and ICRA in Rome ^[66] . All organizations collaborating with ICRANet, as well as ICRANet centers, take part in seminars.

Brazil Scientific Data Center

The main goal of the Brazilian Scientific Data Center ^[67] (BSDC) is to provide data from all international space missions in the gamma and X-ray range, and later on the entire electromagnetic spectrum, about all galactic and extragalactic sources in the Universe. Particular attention will be paid to full compliance with the (IVOA) standards. In addition, the BSDC is going to hold technical seminars, annual meetings, and develop a plan to popularize science.

BSDC is currently being developed at CBPF and at the (UFRGS), it is also planned to expand it to all ICRANet centers both in Brazil and in Argentina, Colombia and Mexico City, thus creating a unique coordinated continental research network in Latin America.

• Official website of the organization
• ICRANet Information Brochure, 2015