Cosmological perturbations and invariant observables in geodesic lightcone coordinates

Abstract

We consider a recent approach to the construction of gauge-invariant relational observables in gravity in the context of cosmological perturbation theory. These observables are constructed using a field-dependent coordinate system, which we take to be geodesic lightcone coordinates. We show that the observables are gauge-independent in the fully non-linear theory, and that they have the expected form when one adopts the geodesic lightcone gauge for the metric. We give explicit expressions for the Sasaki-Mukhanov variable at linear order, and the Hubble rate - as measured both by geodesic observers and by observers co-moving with the inflaton - to second order. Moreover, we show that the well-known linearised equations of motion for the Sasaki-Mukhanov variable and the scalar constraint variables follow from the gauge-invariant Einstein's equations.