Does Palatini Higgs inflation conserve unitarity?

Abstract

In the conventional metric formulation of gravity, the Higgs Inflation model violates unitarity in the electroweak vacuum in Higgs scattering at the energy scale Λ ∼ MPl /ξ, where ξ ∼ 104 is the non-minimal coupling of the Higgs to the Ricci scalar. In the Palatini formulation it is commonly believed that Λ ∼ MPl /√(ξ), where ξ ∼ 109. Here we reconsider unitarity violation in the electroweak vacuum in the Palatini formulation. We argue that there is no unitarity violation in Higgs scattering in the Palatini non-minimally coupled Standard Model in the electroweak vacuum at energies below the Planck scale. In this case Palatini Higgs Inflation completely conserves unitarity and is consistent at all energies up to those at which quantum gravity becomes important. If true, this would imply that Palatini Higgs Inflation has a significant advantage over metric Higgs Inflation.