Higher derivative mimetic gravity

Abstract

We study cosmological perturbations in mimetic gravity in the presence of classified higher derivative terms which can make the mimetic perturbations stable. We show that the quadratic higher derivative terms which are independent of curvature and the cubic higher derivative terms which come from curvature corrections are sufficient to remove instabilities in mimetic perturbations. The classified higher derivative terms have the same dimensions but they contribute differently in the background and perturbed equations. Therefore, we can control both the background and the perturbation equations allowing us to construct the higher derivative extension of mimetic dark matter and the mimetic nonsingular bouncing scenarios. The latter can be thought as a new higher derivative effective action for the loop quantum cosmology scenario in which the equations of motion coincide with those suggested by loop quantum cosmology. We investigate a possible connection between the mimetic cosmology and the Randall-Sundrum cosmology.