Fragility of stealth solutions in mimetic gravity

Abstract

We study a broad class of constrained mimetic-type extensions of general relativity with action $S=\int{\rm d}^4x\sqrt{-g}\,\bigl(R/2+λ\,C[g,Ψ]+{\cal L}_{\rm m}\bigr)$, where $R$ is the Ricci scalar, $λ$ is a Lagrange multiplier, $C[g,Ψ]$ is a scalar functional of the metric and generic field content $Ψ$ (possibly involving $Ψ$ and its covariant derivatives) and ${\cal L}_{\rm m}$ is the matter Lagrangian. The branch $\barλ\to 0$, with the bar denoting a background value, provides a simple screening-like limit in which the constrained sector decouples, as in cosmological realizations where $\barλ$ is typically nonzero on large scales while locally one expects $\barλ\simeq 0$. On the exactly stealth branch $\barλ=0$, the constrained sector drops out of the background dynamics, so, on domains where a background profile $\barΨ$ satisfying $\bar C=0$ exists, the theory admits the corresponding general relativity geometries as stealth solutions. As an explicit realization of this mechanism, we consider the scalar field case, where $C=g^{μν}\partial_μϕ\partial_νϕ\pm1=0$ becomes a Hamilton-Jacobi equation selecting geodesic congruences; in this setting, we study spherically symmetric solutions and construct a stealth Kerr profile using Carter separability. We then show, at the general level, that the $\barλ=0$ branch is perturbatively degenerate with general relativity: the constrained sector contributes to the dynamics only through terms weighted by $\barλ$, which vanish on the stealth branch, while still imposing an infinite hierarchy of constraints on the fluctuations. Consequently, the $\barλ\to0$ limit is generically non-uniform, making the would-be screening perturbatively pathological.