TT coordinate separation and measured separation
ID: tt-coordinate-separation-and-measured-separation
In transverse-traceless gauge, particles initially at rest have fixed spatial coordinates because . Their separation measured in a parallel-propagated orthonormal frame changes: to first order . Hence the physical geodesic deviation is , whereas the coordinate displacement obeys . The extra term in the coordinate expansion of the second covariant derivative reconciles the two results. This applies to infinitesimal separations and linear metric perturbations.
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