Limiting curvature mimetic gravity for group field theory condensates

Abstract

Nonsingular bouncing cosmologies are realized in limiting curvature mimetic gravity by means of a multi-valued potential $f(\Box\phi)$ depending on the d'Alembertian of a scalar field $\phi$. We determine the functional form of such a potential so as to exactly reproduce the cosmological background dynamics obtained in the group field theory approach to quantum gravity. The original proposal made by Chamseddine and Mukhanov [JCAP 1703, no. 03, 009 (2017)], which was shown to lead to a background dynamics reproducing the effective dynamics of loop quantum cosmology, is here recovered as a particular case for some specific choices of the parameters of our model. We also clarify some issues related to the multi-valuedness of the function $f$, showing in particular that its functional form can be unambiguously reconstructed by imposing appropriate matching conditions at the branching points.