Naturally Light Distortion

Abstract

In the most general formulation of gravity, the metric and connection are independent degrees of freedom, and the connection may include torsion and non-metricity (or distortion, collectively) degrees of freedom, resulting in a huge number of possible dynamical fields. However, the most fields are either non-dynamical or extremely heavy and the general relativity is recovered at low energy. We find a unique naturally light vector- or scalar-like distortion field, which can be dynamical and have phenomenological implications. In particular, a light scalar particle that mixes with the Higgs boson naturally appears.

Comments: 8 pages, 1 figure