Mimetic Gravity: A Review of Recent Developments and Applications to Cosmology and Astrophysics

By Lorenzo Sebastiani, S. Vagnozzi, Ratbay Myrzakulov. 2016

258 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mimetic gravity is a Weyl-symmetric extension of General Relativity, related to the latter by a singular disformal transformation, wherein the appearance of a dust-like perfect fluid can mimic cold dark matter at a cosmological level. Within this framework, it is possible to provide a unified geometrical explanation for dark matter, the late-time acceleration, and inflation, making it a very attractive theory. In this review, we summarize the main aspects of mimetic gravity, as well as extensions of the minimal formulation of the model. We devote particular focus to the reconstruction technique, which allows the realization of any desired expansionary history of the universe by an accurate choice of potential or other functions defined within the theory (as in the case of mimetic gravity). We briefly discuss cosmological perturbation theory within mimetic gravity. As a case study within which we apply the concepts previously discussed, we study a mimetic Hořava-like theory, of which we explore solutions and cosmological perturbations in detail. Finally, we conclude the review by discussing static spherically symmetric solutions within mimetic gravity and apply our findings to the problem of galactic rotation curves. Our review provides an introduction to mimetic gravity, as well as a concise but self-contained summary of recent findings, progress, open questions, and outlooks on future research directions.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/83a82dbfd0b4a8710314bd3f5deca7b1fa2f545d

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Citations in the corpus

Dark energy and modified gravity in degenerate higher-order scalar–tensor (DHOST) theories: A review (2018, background): “[32] for a review), which are constructed via a non-invertible conformal or disformal transformation, also belong to the family of DHOST theories (even beyond the quadratic and cubic Lagrangians mentioned earlier), as discussed in [33, 34].”
Magnetically charged black holes from non-linear electrodynamics and the Event Horizon Telescope (2019, unknown): “[78–112].”
Stellar structure models in modified theories of gravity: Lessons and challenges (2019, unknown): “In mimetic gravity, the space-time metric is re-parameterized using an auxiliary metric gμν = −ĝ∂ρφ∂σφĝμν with the auxiliary scalar field φ satisfying the condition g(g̃μν, φ)∂ρφ∂σφ = −1 (see [310] for a review of this theory).”
New physics in light of the H0 tension: An alternative view (2019, unknown): “[280–293].”
Black holes with scalar hair in light of the Event Horizon Telescope (2020, unknown): “[199–229].”