Massive mimetic cosmology

Adam R. Solomon (1) , Valeri Vardanyan (2, 3) , Yashar Akrami (4, 2)

1 CMU - Carnegie Mellon University [Pittsburgh]
2 Universiteit Leiden = Leiden University
3 Leiden Observatory [Leiden]
4 Astrophysique

We study the first cosmological implications of the mimetic theory of massive gravity recently proposed by Chamseddine and Mukhanov. This is a novel theory of ghost-free massive gravity which additionally contains a mimetic dark matter component. In an echo of other modified gravity theories, there are self-accelerating solutions which contain a ghost instability. In the ghost-free region of parameter space, the effect of the graviton mass on the cosmic expansion history amounts to an effective negative cosmological constant, a radiation component, and a negative curvature term. This allows us to place constraints on the model parameters—the graviton mass and the Stückelberg vacuum expectation value—by insisting that the effective radiation and curvature terms be within observational bounds. The late-time acceleration must be accounted for by a separate positive cosmological constant or other dark energy sector. We impose further constraints at the level of perturbations by demanding linear stability. We comment on the possibility of distinguishing this theory from ΛCDM with current and future large-scale structure surveys.

Mots clés: gravitation: massive; mass: gravitation; graviton: mass; gravitation: effect; gravitation: model; cosmological constant: negative; stability: linear; graviton: effect; cosmological model: parameter space; curvature; acceleration; perturbation; dark matter: parametrization; dark energy: density; structure; history; ghost

Domaines: Relativité Générale et Cosmologie Quantique [gr-qc]; Physique des Hautes Energies - Théorie [hep-th]

Adam R. Solomon, Valeri Vardanyan, Yashar Akrami. Massive mimetic cosmology. Physics Letters B, 2019, 794, pp.135-142. ⟨10.1016/j.physletb.2019.05.045⟩. ⟨hal-02066439⟩