Birth and Development of the “Electromagnetic Fields” Group

It is a popular opinion that the electromagnetic fields are only related to telecommunication systems as a carrier of the information. This is certainly true, but it is also in some way misleading because it excludes a lot of applications of paramount interest both from a research and a technological point of view. In this sense the research activity of the “Electromagnetic fields” group is exemplary. In fact, without disowning telecommunication applications, the research has been increasingly oriented towards new and original aspects, not strictly related to ICT. This new point of view led to deepening more and more topics related to physical aspects of the interaction between the electromagnetic fields and matter. As a consequence, models describing the behaviour of the electromagnetic fields in non-conventional environments were developed. For example, models combining Maxwell and Boltzmann equations to treat the non-linear effect of the plasma ignition were introduced; by the same token a multi-physical approach Maxwell-Schrodinger/Dirac to characterize the problem of the quantistic transport in nano-structured materials was developed. In the paper the most important research topics, their developments, applications and their evolution will be presented.