Abstract: Fermion condensate inflation, where inflation emerges from four-fermion interactions induced by spacetime torsion, removes the need for additional scalar fields beyond the Standard Model. In this framework, the fermion field can be decomposed into two distinguished sectors, each giving rise to bound states. After integrating out fermions, the bound fields play the roles of the inflaton and the auxiliary fields, resembling hybrid inflation with a waterfall mechanism. The inclusion of an axial chemical potential naturally introduces a mechanism to end inflation and trigger instant preheating. During the waterfall phase, the effective potential of the fermion condensate supports the formation of non-topological solitons such as Q-balls, which act as seeds of primordial black holes. This model is intrinsically connected to Chern-Simons gravity, which implies a parity-violating universe. Consequently, both the primordial black hole (PBH) dark-matter abundance and parity-violation signatures could provide observational tests of the model.
Biography:Antonino Marcianò is a tenured Full Professor in the Department of Physics at Fudan University and a member of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN). He joined the Fudan faculty in 2014, where his research has focused on gravitational-wave probes of the dark universe.
Previously, he held postdoctoral positions in the United States at Princeton University and Dartmouth College, working on models of cosmological inflation and the physics of the cosmic microwave background, as well as at Aix-Marseille University, where he contributed to the Wilson-loop approach to quantum gravity. His interest in quantum gravity — particularly in noncommutative geometry and quantum-group deformations of spacetime symmetries — originated during his Ph.D. studies at Sapienza University of Rome.
His research spans topological and out-of-equilibrium quantum field theories, with applications across particle physics, cosmology, and astrophysics, as well as interdisciplinary directions including analogue gravity in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and topological materials. He has authored more than 130 publications in leading international scientific journals.
Prof. Marcianò serves as a referee for journals of the American Physical Society, Nature, and several Chinese and European journals. He is also an active reviewer for major funding agencies, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Italian Ministry of University and Research, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Austrian Science Fund, and the National Science Centre of Poland, contributing to the evaluation of tenure-track appointments and research grant proposals.
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