Long-wavelength approximation in cosmology ($k/(aH)\ll 1$)

When physical wavelengths greatly exceed the Hubble radius, spatial derivatives are small compared with temporal expansion scales. A cosmological gradient expansion then approximates neighbouring regions as locally homogeneous universes, while retaining finite perturbation amplitudes. This does not alone discard frozen tensor cosmological perturbations.

For zero shift vector, negative-expansion extrinsic curvature $K=-3H$ and $S^i{}_j={\tilde{K}}^i{}_j$, retain the leading spatial-gradient equations of a minimally coupled scalar. They give $\dot{\varphi }=N\Pi$, $\dot{\Pi }=-N(3H\Pi +V_{,\varphi })$, $\dot{H}=-4\pi GN{\Pi }^2-N{S}^i{}_j{S}^j{}_i/2$, and ${\dot{S}}^i{}_j=-3NH{S}^i{}_j$. The first-gradient momentum constraint is ${\partial }_{i}H=-4\pi G\Pi {\partial }_i\varphi -{\nabla }_j{S}^j{}_i/2$. Shear decays as $a^{-3}$ during expansion. Its neglect after inflationary damping yields the equations underlying conservation of the nonlinear curvature covector.

With negligible shear, a minimally coupled scalar field serving as a clock, and $\Pi \ne 0$, the Hamiltonian constraint and momentum constraint imply $\dot{H}=-4\pi GN{\Pi }^2$ and ${\partial }_{i}H=-4\pi G\Pi {\partial }_i\varphi$. Differentiating the local Friedmann relation yields $\dot{\Pi }=-N(3H\Pi +V_{,\varphi })$ and ${\partial }_i\Pi =-(3H+V_{,\varphi }/\Pi ){\partial }_i\varphi$. Inserting these identities into ${\dot{\zeta }}_i$ cancels all terms, including gradients of the lapse function. The conserved covector becomes the gradient of a uniform-density curvature perturbation at linear adiabatic order. Dropping the shear constraint is essential; this is not a proof of conservation in an arbitrary non-attractor phase.

With vectors and independent tensors neglected, finite scalar cosmological perturbations of the local spatial scale can be encoded by $h_{ij}=a_{\mathrm{bg}}^2{e}^{2\zeta }{\delta }_{ij}$. Scalar lapse and shift potentials complete its 3+1 decomposition of spacetime. The exact shift-square term is $h^{ij}{N}_i{N}_j$, independently of the parametrization of the scalar shift.

The traceless mixed extrinsic curvature of a spatial hypersurface can have leading solution ${\tilde{K}}^i{}_j=C^i{}_j(\mathbf{x})a_{\mathrm{loc}}^{-3}$. Cosmic inflation suppresses this anisotropic expansion. An anisotropic spatial shape can nevertheless freeze to a nonzero constant, so shear damping does not prove the absence of tensor cosmological perturbations.