Weyl-invariant Einstein-Cartan gravity with a heavy ALP: Higgs Inflation and $α$-attractors

Abstract: We initiate the analysis of the inflationary dynamics in Weyl-invariant Einstein-Cartan gravity nonminimally coupled to the Standard Model of particle physics. We take the axion-like particle of gravitational origin to be heavy and show that inflation with the Higgs field can be accommodated in this framework.