Backreaction of cosmological perturbations in covariant macroscopic gravity

The problem of corrections to Einstein's equations arising from averaging of inhomogeneities (backreaction) in the cosmological context has gained considerable attention recently. We present results of analyzing cosmological perturbation theory in the framework of Zalaletdinov's fully covariant macroscopic gravity. We show that this framework can be adapted to the setting of cosmological perturbations in a manner which is free from gauge related ambiguities. We derive expressions for the backreaction which can be readily applied in any situation (not necessarily restricted to the linear perturbations considered here) where the metric can be brought to the perturbed Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker form. In particular, these expressions can be employed in toy models studying nonlinear structure formation, and possibly also in N-body simulations. Additionally, we present results of example calculations which show that the backreaction remains negligible well into the matter dominated era.