The Gauge Issue and the Hamiltonian Theory of Cosmological Perturbations

Abstract

We present a general formalism for the Hamiltonian description of perturbation theory around any spatially homogeneous spacetime. We employ and refine the Dirac method for constrained systems, which is very well-suited to cosmological perturbations. This approach includes a discussion of the gauge-invariant dynamics of perturbations as well as an analysis of gauge transformations, gauge-fixing, partial gauge-fixing and spacetime reconstruction. We will introduce the Kucha\v{r} parametrization of the kinematical phase space as a convenient tool for studying the gauge transformations. The key element of this approach is the reconstruction of spacetime based on gauge-fixing conditions.