The Energy-Momentum Tensor for Cosmological Perturbations
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
2009-10-30 v5 Astrophysics
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
High Energy Physics - Theory
Abstract
We study the effective energy-momentum tensor (EMT) for cosmological perturbations and formulate the gravitational back-reaction problem in a gauge invariant manner. We analyze the explicit expressions for the EMT in the cases of scalar metric fluctuations and of gravitational waves and derive the resulting equations of state. The formalism is applied to investigate the back-reaction effects in chaotic inflation. We find that for long wavelength scalar and tensor perturbations, the effective energy density is negative and thus counteracts any pre-existing cosmological constant. For scalar perturbations during an epoch of inflation, the equation of state is de Sitter-like.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.gr-qc/9704037,
title = {The Energy-Momentum Tensor for Cosmological Perturbations},
author = {L. R. Abramo and R. H. Brandenberger and V. M. Mukhanov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/9704037},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
29 pages, LaTex; to appear in Phys. Rev. D