Towards a classification of UV completable Higgs inflation in metric-affine gravity

Abstract

Towards a classification of UV completable Higgs inflation in the framework of parity-even metric-affine gravity, we investigate the particle spectrum of a deformed theory in the large-N limit. In a simple Higgs inflation model in metric-affine gravity, it is known that its UV cutoff is much smaller than the Planck scale. While it calls for UV completion, a concrete example has not yet been found, even with the large-N limit known as a successful technique to complete an original Higgs inflation defined on the Riemannian geometry. This motivates us to study how small deformation of the simple Higgs inflation affects the emergence and properties of dynamical fields particularly in the large-N limit. As a UV theory has to be free of ghosts or tachyons at least around Minkowski space, we perform the parameter search and find the healthy parameter region where a new heavy particle can propagate without these pathologies.