Obituary of Arturo Bambini

Arturo Bambini passed away at home, while sleeping, during the night between the February 24th and the 25th, 2008, of heart attack. He was born in Como, Italy, on May 30th, 1941. He received the “Laurea in Fisica” degree from the University of Florence, Italy in 1966. He was with the Institute of Research on Electromagnetic Waves in Florence. He was with the Research Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Helsinki, Finland from 1979 to 1980. In 1970 following the heyday of Laser he was co-founder of the Institute of Quantum Electronics, National Council for Researches, IEQ-CNR, where he spent the rest of his scientific career. He retired on September 30th 2005 from the IFAC-CNR the new Institute formed by the merging of Quantum Electronic Institute (IEQ-CNR) and the Institute of Research on Electromagnetic Waves (IROE-CNR).

At the beginning of his career a strong interaction with the experimental groups of the Institute led to some important contribution dealing with the gas laser mode-locking operation. After few years he started his independent theoretical research on laser. In this respect he published works on semi-classical theory of multimode operation in lasers. These works were performed in the second half of 70s. In the early 80s, very important contribution were given by Arturo in the Free Electron Laser(FEL) physics especially in the Single –Particle theory of the FEL in a Moving Frame, in cooperation with Alberto Renieri, Stig Stenholm and later Giuseppe Dattoli. During this time his fame spread out and he became world-wide known as a clever and smart theoretical physicist in Quantum Electronics. I personally remember that Marlan Scully the famous well known authority in Quantum Electronics was always recommending me to give “his best regards to Arturo” when I was going back to the Quantum Electronics Institute in Florence. Actually he was also asking by me to tell Arturo to contact him to organizing international conference or work group on some specific task under study at the moment.

Later in the 80s Arturo moved on the two level atomic systems and he worked on the theory of LICET (Light-Induced Collisional Energy-Transfer). The theory was developed also in cooperation with P.R. Berman of the New York University, and Edward Robinson. Fortunately there was again an interaction and so a cooperation with the experimentalists of our Institute. In particular a group leaded by Riccardo Pratesi, at the time director of the Institute, and formed by M.Matera, M.Mazzoni, R.Buffa et alii, was able to perform some interesting measurements employing two laser at different wavelength on a cell with Europium vapor.

Now he was ready to contribute to some theoretical aspects of the Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC). In particular Arturo had a fruitful collaboration with professor Sydney Geltman of the JILA, University of Colorado and National Institute of Standards and Technology, in Boulder. Two papers are of particular interest a Physical Review Letters “Triplet Scattering Lengths for Rubidium and their Role in Bose-Einstein Condensation” by S.Geltman and A.Bambini, 9 April 2001; the second one " Feshbach resonances in cold collisions of potassium atoms”, Physical Review A, Vol. 65 062704-1-062704-14, (2002).

Soon before retirement he faced with enthusiasm new challenging arguments dealing with the Quantum Computing in cooperation with some USA groups. According to his sister he told her to have obtained some interesting results which are likely to remain locked in his personal computer and among the paper sheets he left at home as draft for himself. Arturo was a reserved person difficult to socialize with. In this respect is quite normal that he was finding himself “at home” in Finland and in Sweden. He was the anti-stereotype of a typical Italian man. But he was very kind if you were going to ask some clarification about some difficult problem in Physics. Probably he was the sort of person using his work to screen his secret inside. This is the reason why it was possible to cooperate with him all around the world but almost impossible to get close to him as a friend or simply to go for a dinner outside after work. He was a good card player especially clever in Bridge. His death is a loss in the physicist community but I like to remember him as a luminous example of a very serious commitment to the research. Now he rests in peace in the monumental cemetery of Antella nearby Florence. We will all miss you Arturo!