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

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• Alternative gravity theories
• Particle dark matter