Cutting out the cosmological middle man: general relativity in the light-cone coordinates

Analytical computations in relativistic cosmology can be split into two sets: time evolution relating the initial conditions to the observer's light-cone and light propagation to obtain observables. Cosmological perturbation theory in the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) coordinates constitutes an efficient tool for the former task, but the latter is dramatically simpler in light-cone-adapted coordinates that trivialize the light rays toward the observer world-line. Here we point out that time evolution and observable reconstruction can be combined into a single computation that relates directly initial conditions to observables. This is possible if one works uniquely in such light-cone coordinates, thus completely bypassing the FLRW 'middle-man' coordinates. We first present in detail these light-cone coordinates, extending and generalizing the presently available material in the literature, and construct a particularly convenient subset for cosmological perturbation theory. We then express the Einstein and energy-momentum conservation equations in these coordinates at the fully non-linear level. This is achieved through a careful 2 + 1 + 1 decomposition which leads to relatively compact expressions and provides good control over the geometrical interpretation of the involved quantities. Finally, we consider cosmological perturbation theory to linear order, paying attention to the remaining gauge symmetries and consistently obtaining gauge-invariant equations. Moreover, we show that it is possible to implement statistical homogeneity on stochastic fluctuations, despite the fact that the coordinate system privileges the observer world-line.