Women in Science – Cinzia Chiappetta

Cinzia Chiappetta, PhD Student, Lancaster University

I have always been fascinated by how physics can explain the world where we live. Growing up I learnt that physics is present in all the processes that we unconsciously experience every day. The possibility to fully explain the reality we are constantly immersed in is the reason why I decided to pursue a degree in physics. During my time at university, I got into contact with a large variety of physics sub disciplines. Among all these subjects, the topic that intrigued me the most was plasma physics with its many applications ranging from compact particle accelerators to astrophysics. After graduating, driven by my passion for plasma physics, I decided to enrol in a postgraduate programme to further my knowledge of this fascinating multidisciplinary subject.


“I have always been fascinated by how physics can explain the world where we live.”

Cinzia Chiappetta

My PhD investigates one of the biggest open problems in plasma physics: the origin and amplification of magnetic field in initially unmagnetised plasmas. The relevance of my studies is manifold. The universe, as we know it today, is magnetised at almost all scales, but the scientific community agrees that at the Big Bang no magnetic field was created. How this field is generated is a puzzling question. Strong magnetic fields arise also in astrophysical objects such as gamma-ray bursts, supernovae explosions and active galactic nuclei. Their origin and long-term evolution are still open questions. In the laboratory, intense magnetic fields can be created through the interaction of intense lasers or relativistic particle beams with plasmas. This opens the way to reproduce these distant astrophysical scenarios in the laboratory via properly scaled experiments, which would provide an unprecedented understanding of the underpinning physics. To answer these pressing questions and explore the possibility of carrying out laboratory experiments, I perform numerical simulations using some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, capable of doing thousands of trillion of operations per second.

About my research, I particularly like the collaborative aspect of it. I can count on a good network of collaborators with whom I share my progress. Discussing with them increases my physics insights and provides me with new ideas. They are the added value to my work!

In general, I strongly believe that the knowledge generated by science is crucial for the development of technologies that may help human society.