English

Instabilities in Mimetic Matter Perturbations

High Energy Physics - Theory 2017-08-07 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We study cosmological perturbations in mimetic matter scenario with a general higher derivative function. We calculate the quadratic action and show that both the kinetic term and the gradient term have the wrong sings. We perform the analysis in both comoving and Newtonian gauges and confirm that the Hamiltonians and the associated instabilities are consistent with each other in both gauges. The existence of instabilities is independent of the specific form of higher derivative function which generates gradients for mimetic field perturbations. It is verified that the ghost instability in mimetic perturbations is not associated with the higher derivative instabilities such as the Ostrogradsky ghost.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1703.02923,
  title  = {Instabilities in Mimetic Matter Perturbations},
  author = {Hassan Firouzjahi and Mohammad Ali Gorji and Seyed Ali Hosseini Mansoori},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.02923},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

v2: Discussions improved, references added, JCAP published version

R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:39:56.258Z