Dr Salvatore Butera
I joined the University of Glasgow as a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in December 2019. Also, I have been awarded a Lord Kelvin / Adam Smith (LKAS) Leadership Fellowship.
I have started my Academic studies in the field of Aerospace Engineering at University of Palermo, in Italy, where I obtained both a BSc and a MSc. My interest in fundamental aspects of science led me to move to Physics. I obtained my MSc in Physics, again in Palermo, in late 2012.
Before moving to Glasgow, I joined the Quantum Gravity group at the Centre de Physique Théorique in Marseille, where I deepened my knowledge of gravity and dealt with the issues related to its quantization. After having obtained my PhD at Heriot-Watt University, I have been awarded a research Grant from the Julian Schwinger Foundation and I moved to the BEC Center, at University of Trento.
In a broad sense, my research interest addresses the study of the physics of zero-point fluctuations of quantum fields. My earliest works in the field addressed the study of the (static and dynamics) Casimir effects. I recently became interested in the field of analog models of gravity, that represent promising table-top systems where the analog of high energy phenomena that are believed happening during the early evolution of our Universe, or in proximity of the horizon of black holes, can in principle be observed. Within this context, my current research aims to climb the first step toward a fully quantum theory of gravity, and entails studying the long standing problem of the back reaction from a quantum field onto its background spacetime.
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