Constructing an extension of Newton's theory which is defined on a non-Euclidean topology (in the sense of Thurston's decomposition), called a non-Euclidean Newtonian theory, corresponding to the zeroth order of a non-relativistic limit of general relativity is an important step in the study of the backreaction problem in cosmology and might be a powerful tool to study the influence of global topology on structure formation. After giving a precise mathematical definition of such a theory, based on the concept of Galilean manifolds, we propose two such extensions, for spherical or hyperbolic topologies, using a minimal modification of the Newton-Cartan equations. However as for now we do not seek to justify this modification from general relativity. The first proposition features a non-zero cosmological backreaction, but the presence of gravitomagnetism and the impossibility of performing exact $N$-body calculations make this theory difficult to be interpreted as a Newtonian-like theory. The second proposition features no backreaction, exact $N$-body calculation is possible and no gravitomagnetism appears. In absence of a justification from general relativity, we argue that this non-Euclidean Newtonian theory should be the one to be considered, and could be used to study the influence of topology on structure formation via $N$-body simulations. For this purpose we give the mass point gravitational field in $\mathbb{S}^3$.
Cosmological backreaction corresponds to the effect of inhomogeneities of structure on the global expansion of the Universe. The main question surrounding this phenomenon is whether or not it is important enough to lead to measurable effects on the scale factor evolution eventually explaining its acceleration or the Hubble tension. One of the most important result on this subject is the Buchert-Ehlers theorem (Buchert \& Ehlers, 1997) stating that backreaction is exactly zero when calculated using Newton's theory of gravitation, which may not be the case in general relativity. It is generally …
It has been argued that the spacetime of our universe can be accurately described by a perturbed conformal Newtonian metric, and hence even large density inhomogeneities in a dust universe can not change the observables predicted by the homogeneous dust model. In this paper we study a spherically symmetric dust model and illustrate conditions under which large spatial variations in the expansion rate can invalidate the argument.
We study an effect of inhomogeneity of density distribution of the Universe. We propose a new Lagrangian perturbation theory with a backreaction effect by inhomogeneity. The inhomogeneity affects the expansion rate in a local domain and its own growing rate. We numerically analyze a one-dimensional plane-symmetric model, and calculate the probability distribution functions (PDFs) of several observed variables to discuss those statistical properties. We find that the PDF of pairwise peculiar velocity shows an effective difference from the conventional Lagrangian approach, i.e. even in one-dimen…
A persistent theme in the study of dark energy is the question of whether it really exists or not. It is often claimed hat we are mis-calculating the cosmological model by neglecting the effects associated with averaging over large-scale structures. In the Newtonian approximation this is clear: there is no effect. Within the full relativistic picture this remains an important open question however, owing to the complex mathematics involved. We study this issue using particle numerical simulations which account for all relevant relativistic effects without any problems from shell crossing. In t…
We present a formalism for spatial averaging in cosmology applicable to general spacetimes and coordinates, and allowing the easy incorporation of a wide variety of matter sources. We apply this formalism to a Friedmann-LeMaitre-Robertson-Walker universe perturbed to second-order and present the corrections to the background in an unfixed gauge. We then present the corrections that arise in uniform curvature and conformal Newtonian gauges.
Cosmic backreaction refers to the general question of whether a homogeneous and isotropic cosmological model is able to predict the correct expansion dynamics of our inhomogeneous Universe. One aspect of this issue concerns the validity of the continuous approximation: does a system of point masses expand the same way as a fluid does? This article shows that it is not exactly the case in Newtonian gravity, although the associated corrections vanish in an infinite Universe. It turns out that Gauss's law is a key ingredient for such corrections to vanish. Backreaction, therefore, generically ari…
We formulate and solve the problem of Newtonian cosmology under the assumption that the absolute space of Newton is non-Euclidean. In particular, we focus on the negatively-curved hyperbolic space, H3. We point out the inequivalence between the curvature term that arises in the Friedmann equation in Newtonian cosmology in Euclidean space and the role of curvature in the H3 space. We find the generalisation of the inverse-square law and the solutions of the Newtonian cosmology that follow from it. We find the generalisations of the Euclidean Michell 'black hole' in H3 and show that it leads to …
Numerical N-body simulations of large scale structure formation in the universe are based on Newtonian gravity. However, according to our current understanding, the most correct theory of gravity is general relativity. It is therefore important to understand which degrees of freedom and which features are lost when the relativistic universe is approximated, or rather replaced, by a Newtonian one. This is the main purpose of our investigation. We first define Newtonian cosmology and we give an overview on general relativity, both in its standard and covariant formulations. We show how the two t…
The large-scale homogeneity and isotropy of the universe is generally thought to imply a well defined background cosmological model. It may not. Smoothing over structure adds in an extra contribution, transferring power from small scales up to large. Second-order perturbation theory implies that the effect is small, but suggests that formally the perturbation series may not converge. The amplitude of the effect is actually determined by the ratio of the Hubble scales at matter-radiation equality and today - which are entirely unrelated. This implies that a universe with significantly lower tem…
We construct high-precision models of the Universe that contain radiation, a cosmological constant, and periodically distributed inhomogeneous matter. The density contrasts in these models are allowed to be highly non-linear, and the cosmological expansion is treated as an emergent phenomenon. This is achieved by employing a generalised version of the post-Newtonian formalism, and by joining together inhomogeneous regions of space-time at reflection symmetric junctions. Using these models, we find general expressions that precisely and unambiguously quantify the effect of small-scale inhomogen…
Due to the non-commutation of spatial averaging and temporal evolution, inhomogeneities and anisotropies (cosmic structures) influence the evolution of the averaged Universe via the cosmological backreaction mechanism. We study the backreaction effect as a function of averaging scale in a perturbative approach up to higher orders. We calculate the hierarchy of the critical scales, at which 10% effects show up from averaging at different orders. The dominant contribution comes from the averaged spatial curvature, observable up to scales of 200 Mpc. The cosmic variance of the local Hubble rate i…
We develop a formalism for General Relativistic N-body simulations in the weak field regime, suitable for cosmological applications. The problem is kept tractable by retaining the metric perturbations to first order, the first derivatives to second order and second derivatives to all orders, thus taking into account the most important nonlinear effects of Einstein gravity. It is also expected that any significant "backreaction" should appear at this order. We show that the simulation scheme is feasible in practice by implementing it for a plane-symmetric situation and running two test cases, o…
We reformulate the averaged Einstein equations in a form suitable for use with Newtonian gauge linear perturbation theory and track the size of the modifications to standard Robertson-Walker evolution on the largest scales as a function of redshift for both Einstein de-Sitter and Lambda CDM cosmologies. In both cases the effective energy density arising from linear perturbations is of the order of 10^-5 the matter density, as would be expected, with an effective equation of state w ~ -1/19. Employing a modified Halofit code to extend our results to quasilinear scales, we find that, while large…
Most cosmological models studied today are based on the assumption of homogeneity and isotropy. Observationally one can find evidence that supports these assumptions on very large scales, the strongest being the almost isotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation after assigning the whole dipole to our proper motion relative to this background. However, on small and on intermediate scales up to several hundreds of Mpcs, there are strong deviations from homogeneity and isotropy. Here the problem arises how to relate the observations with the homogeneous and isotropic models. The usual …
Averaging and evolving inhomogeneities are non-commuting operations. This implies the existence of deviations of an averaged model from the standard Friedmann-Lemaitre cosmologies. We quantify these deviations, encoded in a backreaction parameter, in the framework of Newtonian cosmology. We employ the linear theory of gravitational instability in the Eulerian and Lagrangian approaches, as well as the spherically- and plane-symmetric solutions as standards of reference. We propose a model for the evolution of the average characteristics of a spatial domain for generic initial conditions that co…
We present in this paper a 4-dimensional formulation of the Newton equations for gravitation on a Lorentzian manifold, inspired from the 1+3 and 3+1 formalisms of general relativity. We first show that the freedom on the coordinate velocity of a general time-parametrised coordinate system with respect to a Galilean reference system is similar to the shift freedom in the 3+1-formalism of general relativity. This allows us to write Newton's theory as living in a 4-dimensional Lorentzian manifold $M^N$. This manifold can be chosen to be curved depending on the dynamics of the Newtonian fluid. In …
We present a three dimensional non-relativistic model of gravity that is invariant under the central extension of the symmetry group that leaves the recently constructed Newtonian gravity action invariant. We show that the model arises from the contraction of a bi-metric model that is the sum of the Einstein gravity in Lorentzian and the Euclidean signatures. We also present the supersymmetric completion of this action which provides one of the very few examples of an action for non-relativistic supergravity.
We present a simple quantum-mechanical estimate of the cosmological constant of a Newtonian Universe. We first mimic the dynamics of a Newtonian spacetime by means of a nonrelativistic quantum mechanics for the matter contents of the Universe (baryonic and dark) within a fixed (i.e., nondynamical) Euclidean spacetime. Then we identify an operator that plays, on the matter states, a role analogous to that played by the cosmological constant. Finally we prove that there exists a quantum state for the matter fields, in which the above mentioned operator has an expectation value equal to the cosmo…
We show that mass parameter and radial coordinate values can be indirectly measured in thought experiments performed in Schwarzschild spacetime, without using the Newtonian limit of general relativity or approximations based on Euclidean geometry. Our approach involves different proper time quantifcations as well as solutions to systems of algebraic equations, and aims to strengthen the conceptual independence of general relativity from Newtonian gravity.
The non-linear dynamics of irrotational dust in General Relativity is studied in synchronous and comoving coordinates. All the equations are written in terms of the metric tensor of spatial sections orthogonal to the flow, which allows an unambiguous expansion in powers of $1/c^2$. To lowest order, the Newtonian approximation in Lagrangian form is derived. At this level the evolution is governed by the Raychaudhuri equation for the Lagrangian-to-Eulerian Jacobian matrix. The Lagrangian spatial metric reduces to that of Euclidean 3-space in time-dependent curvilinear coordinates. A Lagrangian v…
The universe is smooth on large scales but very inhomogeneous on small scales. Why is the spacetime on large scales modeled to a good approximation by the Friedmann equations? Are we sure that small-scale non-linearities do not induce a large backreaction? Related to this, what is the effective theory that describes the universe on large scales? In this paper we make progress in addressing these questions. We show that the effective theory for the long-wavelength universe behaves as a viscous fluid coupled to gravity: integrating out short-wavelength perturbations renormalizes the homogeneous …
We derive the non-relativistic $c\to\infty$ and ultra-relativistic $c\to 0$ limits of the $κ$-deformed symmetries and corresponding spacetime in (3+1) dimensions, with and without a cosmological constant. We apply the theory of Lie bialgebra contractions to the Poisson version of the $κ$-(A)dS quantum algebra, and quantize the resulting contracted Poisson-Hopf algebras, thus giving rise to the $κ$-deformation of the Newtonian (Newton-Hooke and Galilei) and Carrollian (Para-Poincaré, Para-Euclidean and Carroll) quantum symmetries, including their deformed quadratic Casimir operators. The corres…
We conclude the study of the Post-Minkowskian linearization of ADM tetrad gravity in the York canonical basis for asymptotically Minkowskian space-times in the family of non-harmonic 3-orthogonal gauges parametrized by the York time ${}^3K(τ, \vec σ)$ (the inertial gauge variable, not existing in Newton gravity, describing the general relativistic remnant of the freedom in clock synchronization in the definition of the instantaneous 3-spaces). As matter we consider only N scalar point particles with a Grassmann regularization of the self-energies and with a ultraviolet cutoff making possible t…
Standard cosmological $N$-body simulations have background scale factor evolution that is decoupled from non-linear structure formation. Prior to gravitational collapse, kinematical backreaction ($Q_D$) justifies this approach in a Newtonian context. However, the final stages of a gravitational collapse event are sudden; a globally imposed expansion rate thus forces at least one expanding region to suddenly decelerate. This is relativistically unrealistic. Instead, we allow non-collapsed domains to evolve in volume according to the $Q_D$ Zel'dovich Approximation (QZA). We study the inferred av…
The Palatini formalism is developed for gravitational theories in flat geometries. We focus on two particularly interesting scenarios. First, we fix the connection to be metric compatible, but we follow a completely covariant approach by imposing the constraints with suitable Lagrange multipliers. For a general quadratic theory we show how torsion naturally propagates and we reproduce the Teleparallel Equivalent of General Relativity as a particular quadratic action that features an additional Lorentz symmetry. We then study the much less explored theories formulated in a geometry with neither…
In this second paper we define a Post-Minkowskian (PM) weak field approximation leading to a linearization of the Hamilton equations of ADM tetrad gravity in the York canonical basis in a family of non-harmonic 3-orthogonal Schwinger time gauges. The York time ${}^3K$ (the relativistic inertial gauge variable, not existing in Newtonian gravity, parametrizing the family and connected to the freedom in clock synchronization, i.e. to the definition of the instantaneous 3-spaces) is put equal to an arbitrary numerical function. A ultraviolet cutoff on the matter allows a consistent linearization, …
A review is given of the theory of non-inertial frames (with the associated inertial effects and the study of the non-relativistic limit) in Minkowski space-time, of parametrized Minkowski theories and of the rest-frame instant form of dynamics for isolated systems admitting a Lagrangian description. The relevance and gauge equivalence of the clock synchronization conventions for the identification of the instantaneous 3-spaces (Euclidean only in inertial frames) are described. Then this formalism is applied to tetrad gravity in globally hyperbolic, asymptotically Minkowskian space-times witho…
