Mori-Zwanzig formalism for general relativity: a new approach to the averaging problem

Abstract

Cosmology relies on a coarse-grained description of the universe, assumed to be valid on large length scales. However, the nonlinearity of general relativity makes coarse-graining extremely difficult. We here address this problem by extending the Mori-Zwanzig projection operator formalism, a highly successful coarse-graining method from statistical mechanics, towards general relativity. Using the Buchert equations, we derive a new dynamic equation for the Hubble parameter which captures the effects of averaging through a memory function. This gives an empirical prediction for the cosmic jerk.