Covariant Bardeen Perturbation Formalism

In a previous work we obtained a set of necessary conditions for the linear approximation in cosmology. Here we discuss the relations of this approach with the so called covariant perturbations. It is often argued in the literature that one of the main advantages of the covariant approach to describe cosmological perturbations is that the Bardeen formalism is coordinate dependent. In this paper we will reformulate the Bardeen approach in a completely covariant manner. For that, we introduce the notion of pure and mixed tensors, which yields an adequate language to treat both perturbative approaches in a common framework. We then stress that in the referred covariant approach one necessarily introduces an additional hyper-surface choice to the problem. Using our mixed and pure tensors approach, we were able to construct a one-to-one map relating the usual gauge dependence of the Bardeen formalism with the hyper-surface dependence inherent to the covariant approach. Finally, through the use of this map, we define full non-linear tensors that at first order correspond to the three known gauge invariant variables $\Phi$, $\Psi$ and $\Xi$, which are simultaneously foliation and gauge invariant. We then stress that the use of the proposed mixed tensors allows one to construct simultaneously gauge and hyper-surface invariant variables at any order.Comment: 15 pages, no figures, revtex4-1, accepted for publication in PRD, typos fixed, improved discussion about higher order gauge and foliation invarianc