xAct implementation of the theory of cosmological perturbation in bianchi I spacetimes

Abstract

This paper presents a computational algorithm to derive the theory of linear gauge invariant perturbations on anisotropic cosmological spacetimes of the Bianchi I type. Our code is based on the tensor algebra packages xTensor and xPert, within the computational infrastructure of xAct written in Mathematica. The algorithm is based on a Hamiltonian, or phase space formulation, and it provides an efficient and transparent way of isolating the gauge invariant degrees of freedom in the perturbation fields and to obtain the Hamiltonian generating their dynamics. The restriction to Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker spacetimes is straightforward.