Evolution of second-order cosmological perturbations.

Malik, Karim A. and Wands, David (2004) Evolution of second-order cosmological perturbations. Classical and Quantum Gravity, 21 (11). L65-L71. ISSN 0264-9381

Abstract

We present a method for constructing gauge-invariant cosmological perturbations which are gauge-invariant up to second order. As an example, we give the gauge-invariant definition of the second-order curvature perturbation on uniform density hypersurfaces. Using only the energy conservation equation, we show that this curvature perturbation is conserved at second order on large scales for adiabatic perturbations.