Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Conservation of stress-energy and the fluid equation in cosmology


I'm trying to derive the equation for the cosmological fluid:


˙ρ+3˙aa(ρ+P)=0


by starting from the conservation of the stress-energy tensor:


μTμν=0


with the stress-energy for a perfect fluid in its own frame being:


Tμν=diag(ρ,a(t)2P,a(t)2P,a(t)2P)



in a spatially flat FLRW metric:


gμν=diag(1,a(t)2,a(t)2,a(t)2)


But I keep getting a bogus answer! Consider the equation you get from μTμν=0 when ν=0:


μTμ0=0gμααTμ0=0


T is diagonal, so μ must be zero, but g is diagonal as well, so if μ is zero, then so is α. This gives:


g000T00=00ρ=0˙ρ=0


Because ρ is just a scalar, so the covariant derivative is the partial derivative. Except this answer is wrong.




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