Polyakov-like approach to the modified gravity and other geometric theories

We study the procedure that allows to rewrite the actions of some modified gravity theories like mimetic gravity and Regge-Teitelboim embedding theory as Einstein-Hilbert actions with additional matter contributions. It turns out that this procedure can be applied to brane action, which lead to a polynomial brane action. We also examine the connection between this procedure and Polyakov trick in string theory.