Axial Gravitational Waves in Bianchi I Universe

TL;DR

This paper investigates how axial gravitational waves propagate in an anisotropic Bianchi I universe, revealing that anisotropy causes damping of the waves and that matter fields are unaffected except for azimuthal velocity perturbations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of axial gravitational wave behavior in Bianchi I spacetime, including solutions and effects of anisotropy on wave damping and matter perturbations.

Findings

Anisotropy causes damping of gravitational waves.

Wave perturbations depend on angular momentum l.

Matter perturbations only affect azimuthal velocity.

Abstract

In this paper, we have studied the propagation of axial gravitational waves in Bianchi I universe using the Regge-Wheeler gauge. In this gauge, there are only two non-zero components of $ h_{\mu\nu} $ in the case of axial waves: $h_0(t,r)$ and $h_1(t,r)$. The field equations in absence of matter have been derived both for the unperturbed as well as axially perturbed metric. These field equations are solved simultaneously by assuming the expansion scalar $\Theta$ to be proportional to the shear scalar $\sigma$ (so that $a= b^n$, where $a$, $b$ are the metric coefficients and $n$ is an arbitrary constant), and the wave equation for the perturbation parameter $h_0(t,r)$ have been derived. We used the method of separation of variables to solve for this parameter, and have subsequently determined $h_1(t,r)$. We then discuss a few special cases in order to interpret the results. We find that the anisotropy of the background spacetime is responsible for the damping of the gravitational waves as they propagate through this spacetime. The perturbations depend on the values of the angular momentum $l$. The field equations in the presence of matter reveal that the axially perturbed spacetime leads to perturbations only in the azimuthal velocity of the fluid leaving the matter field undisturbed.