With negative extrinsic curvature convention, the background trace is . The scalar expansion perturbation is . For lapse function , induced metric and shift vector , it is , where is the scalar shear potential. The expansion of the future normal congruence is , so its perturbation has the opposite sign.
Spatial volume evolution identity Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
In a 3+1 decomposition of spacetime with , contract the metric evolution with and use the Jacobi determinant derivative formula. Here , , is the lapse function, and is the shift vector. The identity separates spatial transport and coordinate compression from the geometric volume change caused by extrinsic curvature.
Static vacuum conformal spatial metric Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
Rescaling the spatial metric by the squared static lapse function gives a useful three-dimensional quotient metric . In Vacuum Einstein equations, its Ricci tensor obeys , while is harmonic. The contracted Bianchi identity recovers the harmonic equation without dividing at critical points.
For spatial scalar convention and , a passive gauge displacement gives and . Moving from synchronous gauge to Newtonian gauge therefore requires and . A scalar density transforms by , giving the displayed density contrast relation. Keeping the background lapse function explicit prevents cosmic-time and conformal-time factors from being confused.