Beyond the standard model of cosmology : a perturbative approach

• Main Author: Osano, Bob Otieno
• Other Authors: Dunsby, Peter K S
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2014
• Subjects: Mathematics and Applied Mathematics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/4918

Includes abstract. === Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-185). === This thesis concerns higher order perturbations of the standard model of cosmology. The theme is addressed in two distinct research areas. The first area deals with linear perturbations of Bianchi type I model filled with dust whose flow is irrotational, and which is an analogue to second order perturbations about the standard model. We investigate both density perturbations and gravitational waves in the shear dominated and the matter dominated regimes. We find that whereas the analysis of the perturbations in the matter dominated regime recovers the standard FLRW results, the analysis of perturbations in the shear dominated regime reveals that density perturbations and gravitational waves decouple only when the background shear is locally rotational symmetric.