1 research outputs found
Covariant coarse-graining of inhomogeneous dust flow in General Relativity
A new definition of coarse-grained quantities describing the dust flow in
General Relativity is proposed. It assigns the coarse--grained expansion, shear
and vorticity to finite-size comoving domains of fluid in a covariant,
coordinate-independent manner. The coarse--grained quantities are all
quasi-local functionals, depending only on the geometry of the boundary of the
considered domain. They can be thought of as relativistic generalizations of
simple volume averages of local quantities in a flat space. The procedure is
based on the isometric embedding theorem for S^2 surfaces and thus requires the
boundary of the domain in question to have spherical topology and positive
scalar curvature. We prove that in the limit of infinitesimally small volume
the proposed quantities reproduce the local expansion, shear and vorticity. In
case of irrotational flow we derive the time evolution for the coarse-grained
quantities and show that its structure is very similar to the evolution
equation for their local counterparts. Additional terms appearing in it may
serve as a measure of the backreacton of small-scale inhomogeneities of the
flow on the large-scale motion of the fluid inside the domain and therefore the
result may be interesting in the context of the cosmological backreaction
problem. We also consider the application of the proposed coarse-graining
procedure to a number of known exact solutions of Einstein equations with dust
and show that it yields reasonable results.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. Version accepted in Classical and Quantum
Gravity