Palatini's cousin: A New Variational Principle

A variational principle is suggested within Riemannnian geometry, in which an auxiliary metric and the Levi Civita connection are varied independently. The auxiliary metric plays the role of a Lagrange multiplier and introduces non-minimal coupling of matter to the curvature scalar. The field equations are 2nd order PDEs and easier to handle than those following from the so-called Palatini method. Moreover, in contrast to the latter method. no gradients of the matter variables appear. In cosmological modeling, the physics resulting from the new variational principle will differ from the modeling using the Palatini method.