Alberto Franceschini - Selected publications#

FRANCESCHINI A., RODIGHIERO G, VACCARI M (2008). Extragalactic optical-infrared background radiation, its time evolution and the cosmic photon-photon opacity. ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS, vol. 487, p. 837-852, ISSN: 0004-6361, doi: 10.1051/0004-6361:200809691.
Note: this is a reference publication estimating the background radiations from UV to millimeter and their evolution with cosmic time and the cosmic opacity due to photon-photon interactions and pair production. The same analysis is needed for estimating the interaction rates of cosmic rays and pair production. The paper has been used and is quoted by a number of researchers in the last few years (of order of 300 quotations in the literature).

FRANCESCHINI A, RODIGHIERO G, VACCARI M, BERTA S, MARCHETTI L, MAINETTI G. (2010). Galaxy evolution from deep multi-wavelength infrared surveys: a prelude to Herschel. ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS, vol. 517, ISSN: 0004-6361
Note: This paper offers modelling and interpretation of the evolution of cosmological sources at the beginning of the Herschel Space Observatory mission. The paper makes use of a first delivery of the Herschel data for retriving the history of stellar formation in galaxies. The paper has also been used as a reference for comparison with data from cosmological surveys of the observatory.

GRIFFIN M.J, ABERGEL A, ABREU A, ADE P.A.R, ANDRE P, AUGUERES J.-L, BABBEDGE T, BAE Y, BAILLIE T, BALUTEAU J.-P, BARLOW M.J, BENDO G, BENIELLI D, BOCK J.J, BONHOMME P, BRISBIN D, BROCKLEY-BLATT C, CALDWELL M, ... FRANCESCHINI A, et al. (2010). The Herschel-SPIRE instrument and its in-flight performance. ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS, vol. 518, ISSN: 0004-636
Note: this paper has been the end-point of a 15-year effort by the candidate, and many collegues allover Europe and worldwide, to build a powerful instrument for the focal plane of the Herschel Observatory. The instrument and the observatory were put in orbit on May 2009 and worked during 4 years since then. An enormous number of publications, using data from this instrument, have referred to this one during the last 3 years.

FRANCESCHINI A, AUSSEL H., CESARSKY C. J., ELBAZ D., FADDA D. (2001). A long-wavelength view on galaxy evolution from deep surveys by the Infrared Space Observatory. ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS, vol. 378, p. 1-29, ISSN: 0004-6361.
Note: the paper comes at the end of the observations by a sensitive IR camera onboard the Infrared Space Observatory (ISOCAM), and exploits the data for studing the new IR observations in a cosmological context.

FRANCESCHINI A, A., BRAITO, V., PERSIC, M., DELLA CECA, R., BASSANI, L., CAPPI, M., MALAGUTI, P., PALUMBO, G. G. C., RISALITI, G., SALVATI, M., SEVERGNINI, P. (2003). An XMM-Newton hard X-ray survey of ultraluminous infrared galaxies. MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, vol. 343, p. 1181-1194, ISSN: 0035-8711.
Note: the paper is one of the important issues including data from the XMM-Newton observatory and concerns new observations of a very elusive but extremely interesting population of X-ray emitters, the Ultra-luminous IR galaxies (ULIRGS).

G. RODIGHIERO, M. VACCARI, A. FRANCESCHINI, L. TRESSE, et al. (2010). Mid- and far-infrared luminosity functions and galaxy evolution from multiwavelength Spitzer observations up to z 2.5. ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS, vol. 515, ISSN: 0004-6361, doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/200912058.
Note: at the end of the Spitzer IR Telescope space mission, the paper computes the key statistical quantities about the extragalactic source population, i.e. source luminosity functions as a function of cosmic time (redshift).

Fasano, G.; Franceschini, A. A multidimensional version of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, 1987, MNRAS 225 , 155.
A new important and very much used statistical test for natural sciences and other.

Franceschini, Alberto; Mazzei, Paola; de Zotti, Gianfranco; Danese, Luigi, Luminosity evolution and dust effects in distant galaxies: Implications for the observability of the early evolutionary phases, 1994, ApJ 427, 140. A fundamental paper predicting a new mode of galaxy formation. It was years in advance compared to contemporary literature.

Franceschini, A.; Toffolatti, L.; Danese, L.; de Zotti, G., Discrete source contributions to small-scale anisotropies of the microwave background, 1989, ApJ 344, 35. Here the author describes for the first time with excellent detail the contributions of extragalactic sources to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), allowing cosmologists to understand how much of the observed signal is intrinsic and primordial, and how much contributed by foreground sources. This paper was used and mentioned by Smoot et al. (1992) in the paper about the discovery of CMB angular anisotropies, one of the major results of cosmological investigations of ever and bringing to George Smoot the Nobel Prize in 2006.

Franceschini, A.; Toffolatti, L.; Mazzei, P.; Danese, L.; de Zotti, G., Galaxy counts and contributions to the background radiation from 1 micron to 1000 microns, 1991, A&AS 89, 285. This paper made an important contribution to open the infrared wavebends to the cosmological research.

Franceschini, Alberto; Silva, Laura; Fasano, Giovanni; Granato, Gian Luigi; Bressan, Alessandro; Arnouts, Stephane; Danese, Luigi, Early-Type Galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field: The Star Formation History, 1998, ApJ 506, 600.

Franceschini, Alberto; Silva, Laura; Fasano, Giovanni; Granato, Gian Luigi; Bressan, Alessandro; Arnouts, Stephane; Danese, Luigi, Early-Type Galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field: The Star Formation History, 1998, ApJ 506, 600. With this research, some fundamental properties are found and investigated about the population of elliptical galaxies, those containing the majority of the stellar mass today: the most massive objects appear to be also the oldest, a new discovery for this class of galaxies. This property was later debated under the achronim of "downsizing" in galaxy evolution.