The Electromagnetic Analogue of Some Gravitational Perturbations in Cosmology

Abstract

Recently attention has been drawn to the fact that perfect fluid tensor perturbations (with perturbed vorticity and acceleration vanishing) of isotropic cosmological models have a perturbed Weyl tensor with electric part satisfying a linear, homogeneous, third-order wave equation while the magnetic part satisfies a linear, homogeneous, second-order wave equation. We construct an analogous class of electromagnetic test fields in the isotropic cosmological models for which the electric vector satisfies a third-order, linear and homogeneous wave equation while the magnetic vector satisfies a second-order, linear and homogeneous wave equation. If the perfect fluid has an equation of state we give a simplified derivation of the authors' previous perturbation analysis describing gravitational waves carrying arbitrary information. We also present the analogous solutions of Maxwell's equations which contain electromagnetic waves conveying arbitrary information.