need help expanding three-metric - Cosmology

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Gabriel Sampaio

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Sep 26, 2025, 1:47:43 AM (7 days ago) Sep 26
to xAct Tensor Computer Algebra

Hi,

I’m very new to xAct and xPand, and I’d like to describe perturbations around a spatially flat background cosmology in the comoving-synchronous gauge.

In this gauge, the fluid four-velocity is

where is the scale factor. Perturbations are restricted to the spatial three-metric , so that the line element is

I would like to perturb to first order in the scalar perturbations and :

My goal is to obtain the three-Ricci tensor associated with this spatial metric, expressed in terms of and , but I haven’t been able to do so.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!


Cyril Pitrou

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Sep 26, 2025, 11:32:42 AM (7 days ago) Sep 26
to Gabriel Sampaio, xAct Tensor Computer Algebra
Hi,

I have made a small notebook which explains how to obtain perturbation equations in a synchronous gauge.
The one you want to use is not the default one in xPand so I also added a section to obtain results with your gauge choice.

If you are interested only in the Ricci of the spatial metric, I think you can just put the Hubble factors to 0 and the scale factor to 1, and this should give you the result.

Regards,
Cyril

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4 Friedmann-Lemaitre_Perturbations_synchronous.nb
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