On the gauge invariance of the locally averaged Friedmann Universe and the Hubble tension

Abstract

The Hubble tension cast a blight on the standard cosmology. As a possible attitude to the problem, the local variation of the expansion rate in an inhomogeneous cosmology has been proposed where the spatial averaging over a finite domain was introduced in order to construct local Friedmann spacetime. However, it is not clear that the concept of the spatial averaging itself is gauge invariant or not. Namely the conclusion obtained by the averaging in a particular gauge is physically meaningful or not. In this paper we address this question, namely the gauge invariance of the spatial averaging in cosmology . We show that the answer is positive by studying the spatial average in the gauge-invariant cosmological perturbation theory.