On Shear-free perturbations of f(R) gravity

Abstract

Recently it was shown that if the matter congruence of a general relativistic perfect fluid flow in an almost FLRW universe is shear-free, then it must be either expansion or rotation-free. Here we generalize this result for a general f(R) theory of gravity and show there exist scenarios where this result can be avoided. This suggests that there are situations where linearized forth-order gravity shares properties with Newtonian theory not valid in General Relativity.