Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2021) 136: 65
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-020-00969-6

Regular Article

General cosmological perturbations in teleparallel gravity

Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Institute of Physics, University of Tartu, W. Ostwaldi 1, 50411, Tartu, Estonia

^a manuel.hohmann@ut.ee

Received: 3 November 2020
Accepted: 25 November 2020
Published online: 10 January 2021

Abstract

We discuss linear perturbations of the most general class of teleparallel spacetimes with cosmological symmetry, and perform a decomposition of these perturbations into irreducible components. We then study their behavior under gauge transformations, i.e., infinitesimal diffeomorphisms of the background spacetime, and derive a full set of gauge-invariant perturbation variables. Comparing our results with perturbations around the diagonal tetrad corresponding to a spatially flat teleparallel background cosmology, we see the appearance of new terms which depend on the particular choice of a cosmologically symmetric background tetrad. Finally, we demonstrate the application of our findings to teleparallel gravity theories. For convenience, results are displayed both in general and conformal coordinates.