Tectonophysics

The course is aimed at allowing the students to acquire the ability to understand and mathematically describe the main physical processes that occur within our planet, from the Earth's surface to the core-mantle boundary, with particular regard to phenomena that modify the Earth on time scales of 102 - 106 years. The mathematization of these processes is also relevant to reach the goal of making the changes that our planet undergoes understandable and collectively called global change.The student will be able to mathematically model the perturbations in the radial and tangential displacements and in the gravitational potential, now monitored by different geophysical and geodetic techniques, due to a wide range of Solid Earth phenomena, from the redistribution of masses on the Earth's surface (variations ofsea level, instability of mass in the glacial compartment of the planet, earthquakes) and within it (mantle convection), instability in the Earth's rotation.

At the end of the course the student will have acquired the following skills:
1) will know how to mathematize a realistic model of the Earth with spherical symmetry, self-gravitating and viscoelastic, in which the fundamental equations of conservation of momentum, of angular momentum and Poisson equation are developed in spherical harmonics;
2) will be able to derive in a completely analytical way the Green functions related to the perturbation of the gravitational potential and to the superficial deformations for surface and internal loads and dislocations for a spherical, self-gravitating and incompressible model, due to surface and internal mass redistributions and earthquakes;
3) will be able to use the results of the two previous points to mathematize the physics inherent to the global processes that the Earth undergoes, following the fusion taking place in the glacial compartment interacting with the solid part of the Earth, the variations of the average sea level and the earthquakes that occur both in the Pacific belt of fire and in Italy, for the purpose of a modern control of the territory in which we live;
4) will be able to model and interpret from the physical point of view the perturbations of the terrestrial rotation and of the gravitational potential, ascribable to the previous point 3), with connections to the current gravitational missions of ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration);
5) will know how to apply the acquired methodologies also to other planets and satellites of the Solar System, in particular to the Icy Moons, such as Europa, Ganymede and Callisto of Jupiter and Titan and Enceladus of Saturn;
6) will be able to autonomously manage the problems related to the previous points, thanks to the use of the textbook: Global Dynamics of the Earth - Applications of viscoelastic relaxation theory to Solid and Earth Planetary Geophysics, Roberto Sabadini, Bert Vermeersen and Gabriele Cambiotti ( Authors), Springer (Editor), second edition 2016.