Instability of Slowly Expanding FLRW Spacetimes

Abstract

We numerically study, under a Gowdy symmetry assumption, nonlinear perturbations of the decelerated FLRW fluid solutions to the Einstein-Euler system toward the future for linear equations of state $p=K\rho$ with $0\leq K\leq 1$. This article builds on the work of Fajman et al. (2024 arXiv:2405.03431) in which perturbations of the homogeneous fluid solution on a fixed, decelerating FLRW background were studied. Our numerical results show that for all values of $K$, perturbations of the FLRW solution develop shocks in finite time. This behaviour contrasts known results for spacetimes with accelerated expansion in which shock formation is suppressed.